


Thirty Days of Johnlock (Or: Yet Another Bloody 30 OTP Challenge)

by Vanalosswen



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF John, First Time, Frottage, M/M, Mass shooting, Military tags, New Relationship, Public Display of Affection, Secret Protector Sherlock, Slight clothing fetish, Slow Build, That coat oh my god that coat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanalosswen/pseuds/Vanalosswen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation of drabbles written for Tumblr's 30 Day OTP challenge. Written primarily from John's perspective with Sherlock interjecting every once in a while, the drabbles begin after the "Scandal in Belgravia" and continue after "The Reichenbach Fall". Rated M for possible smut in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One: Holding Hands

**Author's Note:**

> ((Author’s Note: This story is a compilation of the drabbles I wrote for the 30 Day OTP Challenge on Tumblr. Each day’s challenge will be at the top of the drabble, along with any author’s notes I felt it necessary to include when I published on Tumblr.
> 
> As ever, recognizable characters don’t belong to me (damn the luck), I merely borrow them for my own amusement while waiting for the next season of Sherlock to be filmed and delivered into our hot little hands.))

**Day 1: Holding Hands**

John was exhausted. After a week of little to no sleep chasing after his flatmate as Sherlock chased a serial killer across London, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d remember his name if asked. He sat on the stoop, his face buried in his hands, trying to gather enough strength to get to the street and a cab home. That was assuming he’d be able to climb the stairs without falling when he got there.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice broke through the muzzy fog surrounding his mind, and he looked up at his friend, who was hovering over him. The detective’s eyes were sparkling, filled with the hectic light that always came when he was working on a case. In that state, Sherlock didn’t need sleep or food or anything else a normal person needed. John was quite sure Sherlock was able to live on adrenaline, tea and nicotine patches when he was on a case, something that wasn’t exactly healthy. But at least Sherlock was able to stay on his feet, unlike John.

“John?” Oh, right, Sherlock had been talking to him, and John was staring at him like an idiot.

“Yeah, Sherlock, I hear you.” John put a hand on the rail next to him and tried to haul himself to his feet. He just didn’t have the strength to get his legs under him, which might be a bit of a problem when the cab actually arrived.

“Come on, John,” Sherlock urged when John wasn’t on his feet as fast as the detective could like.

“Unlike some people, I can’t go for a week without sleep and bounce right back,” John grumbled. “I’m older than you, Sherlock, and I can’t drink adrenaline with my coffee.”

Sherlock tipped his head to one side, studying John as if he were some new kind of specimen spread on his dissection table. “If you needed sleep, why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I wouldn’t miss the fun for the world, more fool me,” John said, rubbing at his face with both hands and shaking his head.

Cool leather touched one of John’s hands, long fingers wrapping around John’s cold fingers. John looked up in surprise, realizing Sherlock was taking his hand and pulling it away from his face. “You can’t fall asleep on the stoop of a murderer,” Sherlock said, sounding entirely too reasonable for one o’clock in the morning. “The press will take pictures, and you’ll die of mortification.”

“The press, yeah,” John said, blinking a few times. Sherlock’s hand was wrapped around his, unusual strength in the slender fingers. From years of playing the violin, he supposed. The leather warmed in his hand, going from cold and slightly brittle to supple and soft with warmth. For the first time, John found himself wondering what Sherlock’s hand felt like, uncovered by that leather glove. He blinked again and shook his head as he used Sherlock as a counterweight and the rail as a support. “Yeah, let’s get out of here. Is the cab here?”

“The cab’s been here for five minutes, John.” Sherlock sounded far too amused for John’s mental health. “With the meter running, I might add. Goodness, you are out of it, aren’t you?”

“You could say that,” John muttered. Sherlock shook his head with an amused little smile, but kept a good hold on John’s hand until they reached the cab and John had something solidly metallic to lean against as he slid along the body of the car and into the door. He landed sideways on the backseat, but managed to right himself before Sherlock climbed in the other side.

“Your mate all right?” the cab driver asked Sherlock as the cab pulled away.

“I’m _fine_ ,” John growled, fully able to speak for himself. “It’s just been a long bloody week, and I’m sick to death of cabs and running all over hell and back again. I want a hot mug of tea, and I want my pajamas, and I want my bed.”

Silence descended over the cab for a moment before Sherlock said, with his usual bone-dry humor, “And that’s that.”

John burst out laughing, and Sherlock joined in with his low chuckle, effectively dispelling the tension in the small area. John sighed and relaxed, resting his head against the cold window. The killer lived all the way across London from Baker Street, so they had a bit of a ride ahead of them. That was just fine by the exhausted doctor. Maybe he could catch a nap on the way.

Of course, his mind was too wound up to let him relax enough to nap. Sherlock had done all the mental heavy lifting, but John had done better than his share of the legwork. He thought he would call out of the clinic tomorrow, to give him a chance to sleep and recover. He glanced at Sherlock, who was looking out the window. The detective looked like he was already starting to slump into his post-case depression, which could cause anything from days of lethargy to holes being shot in the wall. All things being equal, John would take the sullen silences over the scare he got every time Sherlock got a hold of his gun.

His eyes went to the gloved hand, currently cupped under the pointed chin as Sherlock tapped his fingers against his jawline. He was tapping out a rhythm of some sort, probably whatever tune was running through his head at the moment. If he followed his usual pattern, he’d unwind in his way by playing the violin for hours after getting home. _‘Just as well I still have my shooting earplugs,’_ John thought. But the thought was affectionate, tempered by the knowledge that they both had their ways of relaxing after a taxing case.

Later, John would blame his exhaustion for what happened next. In a normal frame of mind, he would have never touched Sherlock when the detective was sinking into his depression, nor would he have dared to take Sherlock’s wrist and draw his hand toward him. Sherlock turned to look at the doctor, his eyebrows arched questioningly, but John ignored the unspoken question, another first for him.

John held Sherlock’s hand in front of him, examining the glove and how it fit the lean fingers. Oddly, Sherlock didn’t say anything, no objection or startled question; he remained still and silent, watching John from under a curl that had fallen across his forehead.

The glove fit Sherlock well; John suspected it had been made specifically for him by an actual glover, the sort of thing only the rich could do. Another silent sign of the wealthy family Sherlock chose to ignore, along with the elegant wool coat that cost twelve hundred pounds if it cost a penny and the fine shoes Sherlock used to chase criminals across London. The man wore some of the most expensive clothing John had ever seen, including that ridiculous dressing gown, but he wore all of it carelessly, obviously not thinking twice about actual expenses.

Once he’d examined the actual glove to his heart’s content, John slipped his fingers under the cuff and carefully peeled it off Sherlock’s skin. A part of him expected Sherlock to protest the action, but the detective didn’t say a word. John leaned over and put the glove in Sherlock’s lap, then froze as the rest of his brain caught up with the part that had been in a sort of autopilot until that very second. He looked up at Sherlock, who was watching him with those light blue-green eyes. There was something in Sherlock’s expression, a look of wary expectation, that gave John pause.

They stayed there a moment, Sherlock’s wrist warm in John’s hand, before the detective cleared his throat. “An experiment?” he asked.

John seized on that explanation with relief, knowing “it’s an experiment” covered a multitude of Sherlock’s sins; why shouldn’t he use the same excuse when caught with his brain out to dry? “Yeah, yeah,” he said, a little too quickly as he released Sherlock’s wrist like it was a hot stone. “Just…just an experiment.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

An odd way to phrase the question, John thought, and he hesitated. Because he hadn’t, not really. The goal had been to see what Sherlock’s hand felt like without the glove, and while he’d held Sherlock’s wrist, that didn’t really count.

“No?” Sherlock asked. He extended his hand, all elegant aplomb, not unlike the noble ladies in the movies who expected to have their hands kissed. “Then find whatever you were looking for so you can put your mind at rest.”

“That’s all right…” John began, but stopped when Sherlock twitched his fingers impatiently.

“Be a scientist, John, and follow your hypothesis to whatever end it leads.”

John looked at Sherlock for a long moment, unable to read his friend’s face at all. Sherlock had a way of shutting down all expression, leaving him looking like a calm, expectant wax doll. John looked down at the offered hand, then shrugged and took it in his.

Sherlock’s hand was about what he expected from someone who never had to work a day in his life. The palm was soft and smooth, with the occasional chemical mark on his fingertips from the work he’d done in the lab for this case. But then, Sherlock usually had some kind of mark on the tips of his fingers, either from doodling something idly in the dust, or mixing chemicals, or grease and blood from one of his many experiments. John blinked; he hadn’t realized he’d noticed so much about his friend’s hands before that moment. He was holding Sherlock’s left hand, and as he turned the palm to face up toward the ceiling, he saw the callouses from the violin strings, so much a part of Sherlock’s hand it seemed they must have been there from the moment he was born.

Sherlock often commented upon people’s hands, saying each hand told more about someone’s life story than the whole of a person’s body. It struck John then how much Sherlock trusted him, to put his life story into John’s hands. Or maybe Sherlock was giving him a chance to deduce what he could, using Sherlock’s methods. That thought was a bit intimidating, but John shrugged it off. He wasn’t Sherlock; he couldn’t see the world like the consulting detective did. But he could and did use his own years of training to observe details pertaining to his own area of expertise.

In very brief, John found Sherlock’s hands, with the shaped nails and chemical stains, calloused fingertips and soft palms, oddly appealing. There was strength and beauty in the sleek lines and smooth muscles. John shook his head, releasing Sherlock’s hand and leaning back against the window. “Sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Sherlock asked. “Something clearly aroused your curiosity; I see nothing to be sorry for in that.” He smiled, his white teeth flashing in the passing street lights. “God knows I spend enough time poking where people don’t want me.”

John had to concede that was the truth; Sherlock had a knack for getting his nose into things he shouldn’t know about. He watched as the detective tapped his bare fingers against his thigh, clearly lost in his own thoughts again. John wondered, not for the first time, where Sherlock’s mind went when he got that distant look in his eyes. He looked so lonely, a marble statue reflected in the dark window as street lights flashed by. Even in a moment of triumph, something set him apart from the rest of the world, only able to observe everyone else’s joy without experiencing more than the satisfaction of a job well done.

A wave of sympathetic sorrow swept through John, and he acted on impulse again, taking Sherlock’s bare hand in his.

“Yes, John?” Sherlock’s voice didn’t sound particularly surprised, just drained as the hectic excitement faded away.

“Nothing,” John said. He could have made a million and one excuses for why he was holding Sherlock’s hand, but the short version was the simplest: after a week of the chase, he wanted human contact, and Sherlock was the closest thing to human contact he had.

“All right.” Sherlock’s hand tightened around John’s, a surprising show of affection for the coldly aloof detective. John covered his smile with the collar of his coat; clearly, Sherlock needed the contact as well, though he’d never admit it out loud.

They continued holding hands all the way back to Baker Street, surrounded by a comfortable bubble of silence. The cabbie shot them an inquisitive look in the rear view mirror once or twice, but didn’t comment. That was probably best for him, since John was too tired to have his usual polite filter in place.

When they got home, Sherlock took John’s hand as they exited the cab and helped him up the stairs without a word. They bid each other good night on the landing outside the sitting room, and John climbed the last flight of stairs to his room alone. He flopped onto his bed, only stopping long enough to shed his shoes and coat, and cuddled a pillow against his chest as he started to drop off.

As he began slipping into sleep, he realized that Sherlock’s outdoor clothing was armor for him, protecting what was slender and vulnerable. The swishy, dramatic coat with the popped collar and the scarf protected his neck and brain from the world around him. Not to mention he looked taller and a bit bulkier with the coat (skinny git needed all the help he could get). And the well-made leather gloves? They protected those delicate fingers, helped keep sensation from the outside world to a manageable level. _‘And he let me take one off,’_ John thought. He wondered about that until the second he fell asleep.


	2. Day Two: Cuddling Somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something like this actually happened to me years ago, and I’ve never forgotten.

**Day 2: Cuddling Somewhere**

His phone going off in its annoying little text ringtone caught John’s attention as he pulled his jumper over his head. It had been a long day at the clinic, the sort where he just wanted to go home, put his feet up, and drink a beer while Sherlock puttered on whatever experiment he was working on now. He’d heard bits and pieces of the current experiment, but not enough to get a sense for what his friend was looking to accomplish.

Sitting on the bench used for changing shoes, John pulled his phone out of his trouser pocket and tapped the “new message” icon. Lestrade. What did he want now?

[Your boyfriend’s drunk. Please come take him home.]

[He’s not my…] John sighed and erased the text, knowing Greg knew he and Sherlock weren’t together. Greg Lestrade liked to use that particular phrasing just to get under John’s skin when he was in a mood over something Sherlock had done. That meant Sherlock was in the way, under foot or…

John blinked, reading the original text again. “Drunk?” he asked the empty locker room. “Sherlock doesn’t drink.” That wasn’t entirely true, Sherlock did enjoy a glass of wine on occasion (he was even a bit of a snob on the subject, another of those rich kid habits), but John had never seen him even a bit buzzed on anything but adrenaline. And nicotine patches, but that was different.

[Where is he?]

[The pub you and I like to visit.]

[What is he doing there?]

[I took him there. Come, please?]

So many unanswered questions, but John decided it would be easier to get the answers out of Greg in person than over text.

[On my way.]

Fifteen minutes later, John got out of the cab in front of the pub the two men liked to frequent on the nights when Greg needed to get away from his wife and John needed to get away from whatever Sherlock was doing. The irony wasn’t lost on John, but he just rolled his eyes and ignored it whenever someone suggested they were both getting away from their respective partners.

John walked into the warm pub, unzipping his coat as he went. He spotted Sherlock right away; it was hard to miss someone better than six feet tall who’d taken it into his head to stand on a table to pontificate about something. Greg was sitting close by, his chin in his hand and a drink close by his elbow, obviously trying to pretend he didn’t know Sherlock.

“What happened?” John asked, hovering over Greg’s shoulder as he watched Sherlock deduce a couple by the fireplace.

“He texted me and asked me to bring him here,” Greg said, not looking up. He took a deep draught of his beer. “Something about experimenting and needing a social environment for the best results. I decided it was best not to ask, and here we are.”

“John!” John flinched at the sound of Sherlock’s voice calling his name with the kind of exuberance reserved for drunks. Of course he’d heard Sherlock bellow before, usually while doing things like yelling Anderson down or shooting the wall. This was the first time, though, that he’d seen a big shit-eating grin on Sherlock’s face to match the tone. Sherlock waved a hand at him. “John, c’mere!”

“Master calls,” Greg said with a lopsided grin. John kicked him hard in the calf as he passed; when Greg had finally become convinced they weren’t a couple, he compensated by calling John Sherlock’s faithful puppy. Apparently he had to be an arsehole somehow.

Everyone got out of his way as he passed, apparently well aware that the drama was about to get more entertaining. John did his best to ignore them in favor of Sherlock, who had lost his suit coat somewhere. Somehow, the purple button-up shirt looked even better on him when the cuffs were unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. All of the women in the pub (and quite a few of the men) were watching him with lustful gleams in their eyes. If only they knew about the rest of his moods…

“Sherlock, come down from there,” John said, resting his hands on his hips as he looked up at Sherlock. Christ, like looking up at his flatmate wasn’t neck-breaking normally… “Come on, let’s go home.”

“You’re so tiny!” Sherlock exclaimed. “I could put you in my pocket!” John ground his teeth together as everyone in the pub chuckled, apparently glad Sherlock’s attention was focused on the luckless flatmate.

“I’ve always been short, Sherlock, and you’re drunk.” It was manifestly unfair that Sherlock barely sounded drunk at all. If he drove, a cop would never hear a tell-tale slur. John could hear an uncharacteristic thickness in Sherlock’s voice, though, and Sherlock rarely drawled his name the way he was at the moment.

“Drunk? I’ve hardly had _anything_ to drink, John!” Thankfully for John’s neck, Sherlock crouched on the table, bracing himself with a hand wrapped around the edge of the table and a knee in the center. This close, John could smell the liquor on his breath. Liquor, even, not something easier like beer or wine. And it sounded like he was saying “Jawn”, which was weirdly distracting and funny to John’s demented sense of humor.

“How much have you had?” John asked. When Sherlock opened his mouth, he scowled and added, “Don’t even _think_  of lying to me today, Sherlock. I’ve had a hell of a day and am quite willing to knock you out to get you into a cab.”

Sherlock’s mouth snapped closed and he sat back on his heel. John saw him wobble a bit and swore under his breath. “Quite a few shots,” the detective admitted. “I’m not sure what they were. People kept giving them to me.”

John shot an accusing look around the pub. No one quite dared to meet his eye, telling him rather more than Sherlock’s words. “Get down, Sherlock. We’re going back to the flat, and you’re going to bed.”

“ _I’m_ going to bed?” Sherlock asked in an arch tone John didn’t like. “You won’t be coming to bed too? I thought you had a hell of a day.”

“Not having this conversation in front of a pub full of people,” John said, feeling a blush sweep his face as all eyes landed squarely on him. “Are you coming down, or am I going to put you over my shoulder?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows went up as he looked John over. John was pretty sure he could carry the skinny detective, at least far enough to get him into a cab, but he’d rather not if he didn’t have to. Sherlock let out a gusty sigh as he sat on the table and dangled his legs over the edge. “All right, John. Take me home.”

John’s blush deepened, but he turned and stalked back to the table where Greg waited with Sherlock’s suit jacket and wool coat. Greg was kind enough to keep from smirking as he handed John the suit jacket, but the doctor could sense all of the questions. Stupid, really. Oh well, the important bit was getting Sherlock home. John would deal with everything else after his flatmate was tucked safely into bed.

Sherlock, as it turned out, was a chatty drunk. He wouldn’t shut up as John got his jacket and coat on him, or as they walked out to the front of the pub where a cab was waiting, or as the cab drove them home. John nodded and “mm-hm”d, generally tuning his flatmate out as he checked Sherlock’s pulse every once in a while. He seemed to be doing all right, all things considered, for someone who didn’t drink much. His skin was a bit cool under John’s fingertips, and his breathing was a little slow, but neither was acute enough for John to worry too much about alcohol poisoning.

By the time the cab got them to their front door, Sherlock had started slumping, losing muscle control as he muttered to himself. He managed to get out of the cab on his own, but John had to half-carry him up the stairs into the sitting room. “How’re you doing, Sherlock?” he asked loudly, trying to get and keep Sherlock’s attention.

“Not good,” Sherlock said. He looked ‘not good’, too, his skin going pale and clammy and his hair sticking damply to his temples. “This wasn’t a good idea, was it?”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” John grunted. “C’mon, let’s get you into the bathroom. I have this feeling your body’s going to reject the toxins soon.”

“What?” Sherlock blinked at John as the doctor hauled him bodily down the hall toward the bathroom.

“You’re going to start puking,” John translated. “And I’d rather not deal with more cleanup than I have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John, I’ve never thrown up in my adult life.” Sherlock’s whole body was trembling. John sped up; enough time as an Army doctor had taught him the signs of someone about to have explosive vomit.

“Never? Not even when you were using?” Sweat rolled down John’s back, but he got Sherlock into the bathroom and kneeling by the toilet just in the nick of time.

Sherlock’s hand flashed out, grabbing the toilet lid and yanking it up as his whole body curled forward. John sighed and fetched a flannel from the linen closet, wincing at the painful retching sounds Sherlock was making. He wet the flannel with cold water and put it on the back of Sherlock’s neck, ignoring the whine of discontent from his flatmate.

When Sherlock caught his breath, he managed, “Not that I can remember. But if it was always this wretched, I might have deleted it.”

“Yeah, well, guess what? When you poison your body, it tends to react unpleasantly.” John sat on the edge of the tub and rubbed his forehead. So much for his beer and a relaxing night. If he was reading the signs right, they were going to be here a while.

“Bodies are stupid,” Sherlock muttered. He winced and retched again. Apparently he hadn’t been eating again; the toilet bowl was filled with colorful liquids, but very little that looked like actual food remains.

“They can be,” John agreed. “Of course, it helps if the person living in the body bothers to take care of it. What were you thinking, drinking like that on an empty stomach?”

Sherlock raised his head, his vivid eyes wide open in astonishment. “How…?” Then he looked in the toilet bowl and grimaced. “Ah. You’re learning to observe, rather than just see. Unfortunate timing.”

“I’m a doctor, Sherlock. I’ve always observed the medical stuff.” John felt his temper rising and squished it firmly. He would save the lecture for when Sherlock was actually sober (hopefully with a real bitchkitty of a hangover, if there was any justice in the universe).

“Right,” Sherlock murmured, looking away. He looked so miserable, the detective who usually had everything perfectly under his control. John sighed and scooted from the edge of the tub to the floor next to Sherlock, leaning his shoulder against the cabinet under the sink. Sherlock shot him a suspicious look, obviously waiting for a lecture or something of the kind. When John stayed silent, Sherlock relaxed a little and propped his elbow on the edge of the toilet.

“That’s so unsanitary,” John said, stifling a smile. He couldn’t help but remember Harry as a little girl, only minutes younger than him chronologically and yet so much younger in some ways. He was the big brother, the one who got up with her in the middle of the night when she was sick and held her hair back so she could puke without waking their father. She looked just like Sherlock when she was sick: sulky and annoyed, acting as if her whole body was a traitor to her intellect. He missed the sweet little sister sometimes. Was that why seeing Sherlock drunk like this hurt his heart so badly?

“Don’t care,” Sherlock muttered, bracing a cheekbone against his fist as he glared down at the toilet bowl. “You just cleaned this a few days ago, anyway, so it’s not that bad.”

“You weren’t home when I cleaned it, how do you…?”

“Smelled the cleaning products when I got home. You only use that particular chemical when you’re cleaning the bathroom, which is good, because it’s too strong to use in the kitchen.” Sherlock reached up and flushed the toilet. He still looked entirely too pale for John’s liking, and John wished there was a way to get an IV started on him. Alcohol poisoning was unlikely at this point, but if Sherlock kept puking, dehydration was another kettle of fish all together.

After a few minutes of silence, John ventured, “Want a glass of water? Maybe a peanut butter sandwich?”

Sherlock threw him a look of absolute withering disdain. “I don’t like sandwiches,” he said.

“Too bad. I’m prescribing a sandwich and four aspirin, because I’m nicer than you deserve and don’t want to deal with you having a fucking hangover tomorrow,” John retorted, his personal volume control slipping. Sherlock winced, pressing both hands to his temples, and John relented, lowering his voice a little. “Wait here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Sherlock sounded dispirited, tired. Even a bit old, which was a frightening thing for John. John got up, smoothing a hand over Sherlock’s curls on the way out the door. The feeling of Sherlock’s soft hair under his fingertips made up for the consulting detective’s grumpy growl, and John smiled a little to himself as he walked into the kitchen.

A few moments later, he came back with a plate and a cup. Sherlock was exactly where he’d left him, glaring up at the ceiling. John hadn’t heard him retch again, but he could see more colorful liquid in the toilet bowl as mute testimony to Sherlock’s body rebelling. “Aspirin,” John said, sitting next to Sherlock again and handing him the small pills. The detective didn’t look at John, but took the pills and tossed them back, still scowling at a water stain on the ceiling. He dry-swallowed the aspirin, making John wince. “Water.”

Sherlock looked at John, then lifted a hand to eye level. “My hands are shaking too badly to hold the glass,” he said.

“Try,” John said.

Sherlock sighed dramatically, but took the glass. And while his hands were shaking pretty badly from the vomiting and all, he was able to drink most of the water without spilling it everywhere. John took the glass back and set the plate on the sink. “Nibble at that when you feel like you can. The protein will help settle your stomach.”

“Yes, Mummy,” Sherlock muttered, turning his blue-eyed glare at the plate sitting just above his head. He reached up and grabbed one of the sandwich halves, his shaking hand mashing the bread a bit as he held it in front of his face and sniffed. “Are you trying to poison me?” he demanded, glaring at John.

“I’m a doctor, Sherlock. Let’s assume that if I wanted to poison you, I’d’ve just left you to your own devices and _not_ pitched the food you contaminated with dead body parts.” John was trying hard not to just punch the other man, reminding himself that the hangover in Sherlock’s future would be suitable revenge. Which reminded him, “What was the point of this experiment?”

Sherlock took a small bite of the sandwich, making a face but chewing and swallowing anyway. “Just an experiment,” he said. “Testing the limits, you understand.”

“Not really,” John said, tugging a little at his jumper.

“Mm.” Sherlock took another bite. John recognized the diversion tactic; Sherlock evidently hoped he wouldn’t have to talk if his mouth was full. Whatever it took, as far as John was concerned.

“So what did getting horribly drunk in public have to do with testing your limits?”

Sherlock sighed, evidently annoyed that John wasn’t dropping the subject. “My work often requires me to spend a great deal of time watching places and not seeming out of place. Bars are places people spend time, I can’t imagine why. I needed to know how much I can drink to seem like I belong without clouding my mind.”

“You couldn’t test your alcohol tolerance at home, where the toilet and your bed are just a staggered walk away?”

“People get shirty with me when I play with addictive substances at home.” Sherlock didn’t look up, but John sensed he was watching for the doctor’s response. His body shuddered, and he turned to throw up again. “ _Damn_ it!” he coughed, spitting into the toilet bowl.

“All right,” John said, taking the sandwich away from him. “It’s all right, we have the rest of the night.”

Sherlock growled something very uncomplimentary under his breath, but shed his coat and suit jacket, pitching them out the bathroom door. He shifted a couple times, obviously trying to find a comfortable way to sit, before folding sideways and flopping on the floor. His head landed in John’s lap with a thud, and the doctor froze. “Sherlock?” he asked.

“If I have to stay here, I’m going to be comfortable,” Sherlock growled.

“My legs are going to fall asleep,” John pointed out.

“Then fix us, because you’re not going anywhere if I’m not.”

John sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Sit up a second,” he said.

Surprisingly, Sherlock did as John said, watching the doctor as he scooted around so his back was braced against the cabinet. “All right, come here,” John said, opening his legs so Sherlock had a place for his skinny arse.

Sherlock hesitated a bare instant, long enough to make John question whether or not he was making a huge mistake, before crawling over John’s leg and settling against John’s chest as John wrapped his arms around the slender detective. Sherlock huffed out a sigh. “You must love this,” he said.

“What?” John asked.

“You have that tick for taking care of people. Having me like this must be a dream come true for you.”

Yes, in a way, but only in the sense of where they were at that moment. “I hate seeing people hurting,” he said. “That’s why I became a doctor; to do what I can to get them out of pain.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock sighed and shifted a little. John caught the smell of good conditioner in the curly hair, a smell he associated with Sherlock. Despite the general mess Sherlock made of the flat, he was fastidious to a fault about his daily grooming. The corners of John’s mouth curled up; Sherlock had probably been a cat in another life.

They stayed there another hour or so, Sherlock throwing up every once in a while and John pressing more water and the rest of the sandwich on him. At last, John decided Sherlock was safe to go to bed. He got Sherlock’s shirt and shoes off, but didn’t bother with the trousers as he tucked Sherlock into bed. “Sleep well,” the doctor said, bending and kissing Sherlock’s forehead. “I’ll try to be quiet in the morning so your head doesn’t explode.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock muttered, pulling the cover over his head.

John smiled, knowing Sherlock got snappy when he felt weak. But he didn’t comment as he walked out of his flatmate’s room, shutting the light off and shutting the door behind him. He could still smell Sherlock’s conditioner on his jumper as he walked to his room, shutting the lights off as he went.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day Three: Gaming**

John sat bolt upright, both hands clamped tightly over his mouth as he muffled his short cry. God damn it. He’d managed to go several months without a flashback dream, thanks to breathing techniques and mind organization he’d picked up from the Internet and Sherlock’s commentary on mind palaces and the like. But whether he liked it or not, he had PTSD and some things still triggered the dreams.

He knew what had caused the trigger this time, too. Somehow, the knowledge made the dream even weightier. Lestrade had called them in on an apparent murder-suicide, which would usually be dismissed as “boring”, except for one tiny detail: the murderer/suicider was a well-decorated Captain in the Army who hadn’t been deployed in five years. PTSD was, of course, always a possibility, but less likely after so long.

John had been fine at first, able to go into the flat and take in the sheer amount of blood. Death was nothing new to him, not after the war. He was even fine checking the Army guy, since he wasn’t someone John knew and John had seen more than his share of dead soldiers. He was fine until he walked into the children’s room and saw the dead girls on their beds. They looked like they had been shot in their sleep, their faces peaceful and relaxed, normal except for the gaping holes in their heads. That was when his hands started shaking and Lestrade got him out of that room. Sherlock didn’t seem to notice, too focused on the splatter pattern or something that told him it was a straight murder of the whole family, not a murder/suicide.

Sighing, John slipped out of bed. He knew his personal pattern: when he woke from a dream of dead children and young women dying before he could help, he wouldn’t be able to go to sleep for hours afterward, if at all. Walking as quietly as he could (from the lack of noise downstairs, Sherlock was probably asleep for once), John padded down the stairs in his bare feet, not bothering to pull trousers over his sleep pants. If Sherlock was awake to be bothered by his mostly-naked flatmate, tough titty for him.

John didn’t turn to this kind of therapy very often. He found chasing after real criminals to be good enough most of the time. But needs must sometimes, and since Sherlock had already solved the case on the cab ride home, John knew they’d be bored again for a while. He opened the cupboard under the telly and pulled out his video gaming system. He hid it from Sherlock in the hopes of keeping it intact and in at least two pieces. So far, it seemed to be working.

An hour into his shooting game, John was beginning to relax. He wasn’t sure why games like this helped on the nights when nothing else did, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak. Maybe it was because the game was set during the Cold War, one he’d been too young to participate in. Maybe it was because he tended to play the game as a sniper, something he’d never been in Afghanistan. Or maybe his brain was able to use the violent images to kill his dreams because it was just a game and he could switch off any time. Whatever the reason, it worked.

A floorboard creaked, and John sighed as he lined up a shot. One more headshot, and he’d get the achievement or trophy, or whatever it was on a Playstation. He liked seeing the little notifications pop up on his screen. He should have known Sherlock would come out eventually to investigate the noise. It was anomalous, even with the volume down low enough to hide the noises under the regular street rumble. He didn’t look at his flatmate as Sherlock approached his chair, but he found he could sense the detective’s movements by the little sounds he made. Once, he’d been able to tell which parent was walking across the living room below his loft bedroom by the little traces of their voice in their breathing. Once, that had been a survival trait.

“If you bump my arm and make me miss this shot, I’ll beat you to death with the controller,” he said as Sherlock crouched by the arm of his chair.

“I won’t,” Sherlock said. He sounded fascinated by what was on the screen.

John exhaled, letting his hands relax so they stopped shaking. Just like in real life, a sniper shot in a video game could be ruined at the last second by a minute twitch on the sticks. When he was sure he had the shot lined up perfectly, he squeezed the controller trigger. His target’s head exploded. John smiled as the trophy message flashed on the screen and he clicked out of the sniper view, sending his character running toward the next objective.

“It’s a game.” John jumped a little; he’d forgotten Sherlock was sitting there, leaned against the armchair. “A game about war.”

“Right,” John said, hitting the “start” button to pause the game. He looked down at Sherlock, relishing one of the few times he could see the top of his flatmate’s head.

“Why are you playing a game about war? Aren’t games supposed to be fun? A way to take your mind off things?”

“What, like Cluedo?” John asked, rolling his eyes automatically. “This is fun, and it does take my mind off…things.” His voice faltered a little, and Sherlock looked up at him. The television lit his face oddly, throwing huge shadows on one half and giving the other half a weird glow.

“I saw your face in the flat,” Sherlock offered when John didn’t continue. “I thought tonight might be a dream night.”

John blinked a couple times. Sherlock had noticed? Of course Sherlock noticed, he noticed everything. But then, why hadn’t he said anything before now? He opened his mouth to ask that very question, but Sherlock cut him off. “I didn’t say anything because I’ve observed you don’t like to talk about your nightmares or your triggers. I thought you might prefer it if I pretended not to notice.”

“Oh.” That was unexpectedly considerate of Sherlock. “Thank you.”

Sherlock nodded and looked at the telly again. “Does this actually help?”

“Mm, sometimes. Killing things in an imaginary world helps keep things compartmentalized.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“All right,” John shrugged. He started the game up again and headed his character off to the next mission objective. He could almost feel Sherlock’s mental gears whirring under all that curly hair, but the detective didn’t say anything for a long time.

As John’s character crouched, waiting for a shot, Sherlock murmured, “Enemy on your three.”

John reacted instinctively, spinning the character around. Sure enough, there was someone just within sniper range getting ready to take a shot; he killed the enemy with a quick shot and exhaled. “Thanks. Where’d you learn that terminology?”

Sherlock shot him a scathing look. “I looked it up shortly after you moved in,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what sorts of things you might have carried over from the Army, and I wanted to be prepared in case you shouted something like ‘enemy on your six’.”

“Oh.” That was smart planning on Sherlock’s part; if John found himself in a situation where he was shouting something like that, there wasn’t time for even Sherlock’s quick brain to decipher the Army lingo. As John had shown with the game, instinct was the only savior if things got that hairy. “Well, all right then.”

John went back to his game, working his way through a series of tasks. Sherlock occasionally spoke up, only ever to warn him about someone about to shoot him. That bothered John at first; did Sherlock think he couldn’t see anything? Then he realized this was a lot like Afghanistan and the battlefield of London. Two pairs of eyes were better than one, especially when an enemy could come from anywhere. He relaxed a little with that realization and finished the objective without getting himself killed, a new personal best.

“May I try?” Sherlock asked.

“Sure,” John said, saving his game and going back to the top menu to create a new one for Sherlock. He handed the controller to the detective and sat back, wondering which way this would go. According to his young patients, there were two kinds of people who started playing video games: the sort who took to it immediately (usually under age fifteen) and those who flailed around getting themselves killed until they either gave it up as a bad idea or got better.

Sherlock fumbled with the controls for a moment or two as he got his game set up, then stared at the screen as the opening cut scene ran. “What’s the point of this?” he asked.

“Story and set-up. The games didn’t used to be like this when I was a kid; back then, the games were all about running around jumping on barrels in 8-bit animation.” John shrugged.

Sherlock put up with the cut scene longer than John would have guessed, lasting a full twenty seconds before mashing the buttons, trying to find a way to make the scene stop. He hit the right one on his third try, and the first mission began.

John considered it incredibly unfair that Sherlock took to the game like a duck to water. He suspected having time to watch John play and figure out which buttons did what helped, but a lot of it was the detective’s natural dexterity. His fingers moved as surely across the controller as they did over his violin, and John only had to show him how to do something once when he needed to get something out of his inventory.

When Sherlock finished the first mission, he made an interested noise in the back of his throat as he saved the game and handed the controller back to John. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “My adrenaline is almost as high as it would be during a real chase. I think I see why this helps you.”

“Thanks,” John said. He considered the controller and smiled. “I think I’ll try sleeping again.” Watching Sherlock had almost the same effect as actually playing; he felt relaxed enough to lie down and close his eyes and hope the defenses against insanity were strong enough.

For two months afterward, Sherlock spent his nights playing through all the games John had collected. He always yielded the controller if John came down in the middle of the night needing his game therapy, though. On those nights, he sat in front of John’s armchair with his curls tickling John’s knees, occasionally warning the doctor about enemies. John never asked why Sherlock stuck with the games long past his usual boredom point, and Sherlock never explained. It was enough that they shared the fun.


	4. Day Four: On a Date

**Day 4: On A Date**

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

John set his teeth together, doing his best to ignore the repetitive tapping from Sherlock. The detective was deep in thought about something as he stared through the eyepieces of his microscope, and didn’t seem to realize he was tapping the rhythm “shave and a haircut, six bits”. Again. And again. He’d been doing that for the last half hour. John was usually able to ignore the more annoying noises his flatmate made, otherwise he’d’ve been completely barmy by the end of the first month. But he kept thinking the “shave and a haircut, six bits” line in time with Sherlock’s tapping, which made it impossible to ignore.

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock looked up from his microscope, his eyes registering surprise at the edge in John’s voice. “Yes?”

“If you tap that rhythm one more time, Scotland Yard will never find your body.”

Sherlock turned his head slightly, looking at John out of the corners of his eyes. “It bothers you? My little noises don’t usually bother you.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but John was willing to let it slide if Sherlock would stop tapping that stupid rhythm over and over. “I can hear the words in the rhythm.”

“There are words for the rhythm?”

John was about to call bullshit—how could even Sherlock not know about “shave and a haircut, six bits”?—but stopped when he saw the little pucker between the detective’s eyebrows. Sherlock only got that little wrinkle when he really didn’t know something and was annoyed about being called out on his lack of knowledge. “Yeah, you know…” John tapped the rhythm on his leg as he said, “Shave and a haircut, six bits.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock’s eyebrows went up a little. “I’ve never heard the words. Someone was tapping that at Scotland Yard, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“It has a habit of sticking, true,” John agreed.

Sherlock settled back on his heels, pressing his hands together under his chin as he studied the table. “Well!” he finally exclaimed.

John jumped, surprised out of his book. “Well what?” he asked.

“I can’t focus on the experiment while that rhythm is running through my head, and my tapping it annoys you to the point of making death threats. So we need to find something else to do.”

“No ‘we’, Sherlock, I’m enjoying my book.”

“You’ll enjoy what I have in mind.”

“Not as much as I’m enjoying my Jim Butcher book.”

Sherlock came over and snatched the book from John’s hand, flipping through rapidly. “Fantasy,” he proclaimed, disdain dripping from the three syllables as he tossed the book somewhere behind him. “ _American_ fantasy, even. My idea is far better.”

John leaned around Sherlock to see where his book had landed, then looked up at his flatmate. Sherlock had that look in his eyes, the look that said “Drop whatever you were doing, we’re going on an adventure”. Long experience had taught John not to argue too loudly when Sherlock got a new idea in his head. He’d be dragged along like a puppy’s favorite chew toy anyway; he might as well enjoy the ride. “All right, what’s your idea?”

“We go on a date.”

John heard and understood each individual word, but the overall meaning of the sentence took a few minutes to process. “I’m sorry?” he asked, blinking rapidly.

“You heard me, John, you know I detest repeating myself.”

“A date. You and I.” John didn’t bother adding the usual “I’m not gay” disclaimer; he wasn’t entirely sure about that anymore and didn’t want to hand Sherlock any ammunition. “Why?”

“Because I need something to do, and I’ve been interested in this idea of a ‘date’ since you told me what a date is.”

John tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair. “You mean a friend date, then. Going and having dinner together because we’re friends and like being around each other.”

“You’re being particularly dense today. No, I mean a date like the ones you take all those women on.” Sherlock tapped his foot in the “shave and a haircut, six bits” rhythm, and John glared at him.

“Fine. But if you tap that bloody rhythm during dinner, you’re buying.”

“Who’s buying otherwise?”

“We’ll go Dutch.”

“That’s hardly fair. As I understand dating, someone always pays for both. That’s how you know it’s a date and not just two people eating at the same time.”

John pushed himself out of his chair, nudging Sherlock backwards. “Fine. If you can keep from tapping that rhythm through all of dinner, I’ll buy. But if you tap it even once, dinner’s on you. Deal?”

“Oh.” Sherlock looked John up and down with a gleam in his eyes. “We’re turning this into a dare as well as a date? _Excellent_ , I do love a challenge.”

“I’ll go get changed,” John said.

A half hour later, John was in a nice button-down shirt and jacket, seated across the table from Sherlock at an upscale Italian restaurant and reading a menu. Sherlock had his hands folded under his chin, staring out the window and apparently deep in thought. John cleared his throat a couple times, unwilling to start the conversation but not really sure what Sherlock expected from him or this “date” experience.

At last, Sherlock snapped out of whatever internal world he’d inhabited and smiled nervously at John. John was fascinated to realize he recognized the little signs of Sherlock’s nervousness, though someone who didn’t know the detective would probably be completely fooled by his show of nonchalance. His fingers tapped twice, but he caught himself before going through the full rhythm, and John grinned. “So,” Sherlock said.

“So,” John agreed.

“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?” Sherlock complained.

“I thought you liked a challenge.” John chuckled as Sherlock’s lips pressed together in an expression that was certainly _not_ a pout, even though it looked exactly like a five-year-old’s pout.

“I do,” Sherlock said. “I just like knowing where my footing is before I leap into a challenge.”

“Really?” That was news to John. “And here I thought you liked flinging yourself about, trusting that you’ll always land on your feet like a cat.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The only way to fling myself forward is to have solid ground under me.” Sherlock pressed his palms together again, obviously considering his next move. “What do people talk about on dates?”

“No.” John stared at his flatmate.

“‘No’?” Sherlock echoed.

“No, I won’t believe you’ve never been on a date. Not even in school?”

“Not even then. My peers were boring through primary and secondary school, and I was…busy in uni.” A light flush touched Sherlock’s high cheekbones, much to John’s surprise and shock. He would have never guessed Sherlock could be embarrassed by anything. Then he processed what Sherlock had actually said and made an educated guess.

“Is that when you started…?”

“Using, yes,” Sherlock interrupted brusquely. Ah, that explained it. Sherlock tended toward tactlessness, but he got downright rude when someone talked about his old drug habit. Not a subject he really enjoyed; John guessed it was because there were days when he wanted to go back to his old ways.

“People tend to talk a lot of rubbish on dates,” John said, taking pity on his flatmate. “You know, where did you go to school, subjects passed or failed in uni, occupations and the hazards in them, that sort of thing. ‘Getting to know you’ crap.”

“That sounds intensely _dull_. How can you stand that sort of thing so often?”

“I suffer through in the hopes of getting to the better conversation material,” John said, shaking his napkin out and putting it on his lap. “And if I can manage to navigate a few of those, I have a shot at having a girlfriend for a while, maybe even getting laid.”

The Universal Law of Comedy brought the waitress within earshot at that very moment, and she gave John a Look that indicated she’d heard his last comment and couldn’t decide if she was amused or slightly offended. John sighed, not really surprised by her horrible timing, and ordered his food. He raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, who made a face but surprisingly ordered an actual entrée. John hadn’t expected that.

“So you do eat real food,” John commented as the waitress walked away with the menus to place their order. “I was sure you lived on air and tea.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” That was the second time Sherlock had used that phrase in the last ten minutes, and it was starting to get under John’s skin. “The human body requires more nutrients than tea alone can provide. Digestion slows me down on cases, you know that.”

“Insulting someone’s intelligence isn’t a great way to have good date dinner conversation,” John said, folding his hands in front of his mouth.

Sherlock paused, looking at John. “Not good?” he asked.

“Bit not good.”

“Oh. Well, then. What _should_ we talk about?”

“Something more interesting than me being a holy terror to the upper-crust kids in St. Bart’s, please God please, I am sick to death of telling that story.”

Sherlock’s eyes crinkled in a genuine smile. “Do the women not believe you were a ‘holy terror’?” he asked.

“One woman said she didn’t believe me because, and I’m quoting her directly, I’m ‘such a teddy bear’.”

That got an honest chuckle from Sherlock, which was something of a rare pleasure to hear. “She obviously hasn’t seen you soaking wet at three in the morning, clutching your pistol like a security blanket, waiting for me to come out of a nice, warm building because I said I needed you.”

“Yes, I still haven’t forgiven you for that,” John said, narrowing his eyes playfully at his friend. “You could have at least told me you were still alive and unhurt.”

“Which would have taken you off your combat edge. I needed you ready to shoot to kill if I called.”

“I’m always ready to kill when I have my pistol in my hand. That’s part of the training.”

The pool of silence around them caught their attention, and both men looked around, realizing the people at the tables close by were staring. John smiled, trying to defuse the tension, and raised his hands a little. “Paintball guns,” he said. “There was a tournament last weekend.”

Sherlock snorted softly and John kicked him under the table. The excuse seemed to work well enough for the other patrons, at least, and they turned back to their individual conversations. “That was close,” John murmured, sipping his water.

“Mm. We probably shouldn’t discuss work at dinner.” Sherlock picked up a piece of bread and began absently picking it apart.

“Well, there went the last interesting topic,” John joked.

Sherlock looked at him through that fringe of dark eyelashes, and John wondered what the detective was thinking. “Maybe,” was all he said, and he went silent until their food arrived.

They ate in silence for a while before Sherlock sat back with a scowl. “This is just like every other meal,” he complained. “Except we’re somewhere nice, so we can’t even discuss murder or experiments or anything else _interesting_.”

“Sherlock. The public is gawking,” John said, barely glancing up from his pasta. He didn’t have to look around to know what the other patrons were doing; Sherlock got that look from random passerby frequently.

“Let them,” Sherlock growled, turning his megawatt scowl on everyone else around them. “Dates are supposed to be _special_ , aren’t they? Isn’t that why you go to all the bother of getting showered and shaved and changed for them?”

John set his cutlery down and folded his hands under his chin. “Dates are special, Sherlock. But most of the time, dates are a means to an end.”

He had the detective’s undivided attention now, those blue eyes narrowed and focused on him. “Explain.”

“When I go out on a date with a woman, I’m looking to see if she’s someone I can establish a relationship with. And relationships involve sentiment and messy emotions, the sorts of things you’re not interested in.”

John hadn’t thought the scowl could get any deeper. Sherlock proved him wrong as the corners of his mouth dipped farther. He mumbled something, and John cocked his head to the side. No, he couldn’t have just heard that…could he? “Sorry, what?” he asked.

“I might be, with the right person.”

Well. Shit. He _had_ heard right. John frowned down at his pasta, suddenly not hungry. “Is that what this is about? You’re practicing for someone?”

“John.” Something about Sherlock’s tone brought the doctor’s head up a little. “You are incredibly dense sometimes. I am exactly where I want to be, with the person I want to be with.”

John’s mouth went dry. “Oh. Um. Thanks…for the clarification.”

Sherlock nodded, smiling just a bit. “You’re welcome.”

They ate in silence for a moment longer. John opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but stopped when Sherlock’s text tone went off. Sherlock glanced at John, arching an eyebrow, and John nodded. Sherlock took his phone out and quickly read the message. And as he read, he started tapping again.

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

Tap tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.

“Excellent!” Sherlock was suddenly radiant, grinning at John as he shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Lestrade needs us.”

“All right,” John said, finishing his last bite and wiping his mouth. “Catch the tab on the way out the door, won’t you?”

The look on Sherlock’s face was absolutely priceless as he looked from John to his fingers, still tapping out the rhythm. He exhaled a huge sigh. “All right. You win this one.”

“I’ll even buy dinner next time you want to try the dating thing,” John said, grinning as he got up. “C’mon, Lestrade is waiting for us.” He was still smiling later, even as the rain blew past the umbrella and soaked him through to the skin, even with Sherlock so focused on the chase he couldn’t be bothered to notice anything outside the crime scene. Sherlock had wanted a date with him. Things were looking up.


	5. Chapter 5

**Day Five: Kissing**

John was restless. This was somewhat new territory for him; usually, he was the calm, collected one while Sherlock was bouncing off the walls like a toddler on sugar, or he was freaking out because of some experiment Sherlock had brought home. They were between cases, but Sherlock seemed content to sprawl on the couch, reading. When John asked what he was reading, all he got was a flash of the title and no verbal reply; Sherlock was engrossed in whatever it was.

He couldn’t seem to settle into doing anything, that was the trouble. He cleaned his room, started a load of laundry, tidied up the kitchen (which pulled Sherlock out of the book long enough to remind John not to touch whatever was taking up most of the table), and tried reading one of the three books he had started by his armchair. Even with all that activity, he couldn’t shake the feeling of ants under his skin.

He wound up down in the communal laundry room, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall as he watched his laundry tumble around and around. Hmm. Would the woolly blue jumper be the next piece of clothing to fall against the dryer door? Or the jeans with the hole developing on the knee? He traced the pattern of the linoleum and said, “Jumper.”

A moment later, the jeans fell against the door, and John made a face. “Hmm. The red pants.” That prediction proved to be correct, making John smile.

“John?” John looked up to see Sherlock standing in the doorway, his finger marking his place in the book he held. The detective looked John up and down, an amused little smile tweaking the corners of his mouth. “What are you doing?”

“I’m bored, Sherlock. And restless.”

“Oh.” Sherlock tapped the book against his thigh. “So you’re, what, staring at the laundry in hopes of being hypnotized?”

“You shoot walls when you’re bored and restless. Mine is less destructive.” John watched as the blue jumper made a brief appearance before being edged out by the tan cable-knit jumper.

“Hmm. All right. Are you bored enough to come help me with an experiment?”

There was something about Sherlock’s tone, something that hinted at possible trouble, and John sighed. “What sort of experiment?”

“The sort that waits until you’re about to die of boredom before asking. Deduce from that what you will.” Sherlock disappeared around the corner again.

John stared at the empty doorway, pursing his lips as he considered that answer. “Dammit,” he muttered, pushing himself up off the floor and following his flatmate. Sherlock knew exactly how to manipulate John. Somehow, knowing that he was being manipulated only made matters worse.

Sherlock was waiting in the sitting room, a faint satisfied smile curling the corners of his mouth upward. “I thought that might work,” he remarked.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’d rather endure whatever your experiment is than risk being found dead of boredom on the laundry room floor. What’s…” John was about to ask what the experiment was, but found himself cut off by Sherlock grabbing him by the front of his jumper, pinning him against a wall, and kissing him.

Sherlock kissed like he did everything else: with concentrated passion and an eye toward doing it exactly right. Even with a frozen brain, though, John could tell Sherlock wasn’t sure he was doing it right; there was something about the way Sherlock’s mouth moved that spoke of educated ignorance and an absolute lack of personal experience. Then Sherlock stepped back, eyeing John with that nervous little tick in the corner of his eye. “Not good?” he asked.

John’s heart melted at the look on Sherlock’s face, the uncertainty in his voice, and most of all, that question. Sherlock only asked “not good”, a childish way of asking, when he wasn’t sure about ethics and the right protocol when interacting with the world outside that amazing brain. “Good,” he said. “Um…yes, good.”

“Ah? Good.” Sherlock’s shoulders relaxed.

“Experiment?”

“Couldn’t think of another way to phrase it to get your attention.”

“Oh.” John pushed off the wall, catching his breath. Sherlock’s kiss had been inexplicably exciting, for all that the detective was obviously inexperienced. “So, was that the first…?”

“Mm-hm.” Sherlock’s eyelids drooped a little, hiding those amazing eyes behind the long eyelashes. And holy God, since when had John thought of Sherlock’s eyes as amazing? “Was it not…satisfactory?”

“No, no, it was,” John said hurriedly. “A little…unexpected, but…yeah, nice.”

Sherlock’s shoulders moved in something like a shrug. “I’ve been thinking about kissing you since our date,” he said.

Oh. That was…interesting, since John had been thinking along the same lines for the last week or so since their not-awkward-at-all date. “Oh,” he managed.

Sherlock inhaled deeply, the motion drawing John’s eye to the lean lines and angular planes under the ever-present suit coat. The detective opened his mouth to say something, but John couldn’t resist any more, not when Sherlock had made the first move. He leaned forward, catching Sherlock’s lapels, and kissed him. Sherlock made a surprised little noise into his mouth, his hands coming up to John’s shoulders, and John felt a little tingle of danger as he realized Sherlock had been reaching for his throat until he stopped himself. John’s whole body thrummed with the adrenaline spike that shot through him at the moment of danger, and he opened his mouth to Sherlock, showing the detective by example how to really kiss someone.

Sherlock was a quick study, following John’s lead as their bodies settled against each other. John was surprised to realize the height difference didn’t seem to affect the kissing much. He’d always kissed women who were a bit shorter than him or at least the same height. Having to bend back a little to kiss Sherlock filled his stomach with an odd assortment of butterflies. When they pulled apart, John was flushed and breathing hard. He was relieved to realize Sherlock looked about the same, and the detective looked far more surprised at his reaction than John felt.

“That was…” Sherlock began, then stopped, looking frustrated and surprised at his inability to find words. “Hmmm. Very interesting. I should…I would like to…”

“Maybe…we can do that again?” John asked. “Sometime?”

Relief blossomed across Sherlock’s face, beautiful and almost painful to see. “I’d like that,” he said. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((A little background, if I may. My sister is in the United States Navy; many of my dearest friends are in the United States Army. And every single one of them are beyond protective of their dog tags. So when I was handed this prompt, I immediately thought of the time my brother stole my sister’s tags and the knock-down drag-out fight that came of that. I’m not all that good at fluff; I like plot and a bit of angst.))

**Day Six: Wearing Each Other’s Clothing**

John couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier. After the kissing experiment, Sherlock had become more touch-oriented where John was concerned. Nothing hugely overt, not so much that an outsider would notice, but John sensed and catalogued every time Sherlock touched him.

Item: Sherlock touched his shoulder at a crime scene to get his attention, and his hand lingered a second longer than was necessary.

Item: while watching crap telly, Sherlock flopped onto the sofa like a puppy, his head on John’s lap.

Item: Sherlock walked through the sitting room, paused behind John’s chair, and ruffled his hair fondly.

All right, fine, so it wasn’t all the touches John wanted, now that he was finally admitting to himself that he was falling in love with Sherlock. Irene, damn her gorgeous eyes, had made him see that in the car park. But it was more than he’d had, and occasionally there was an item with mental gold stars all around it:

Item: Sherlock turned from his microscope as John passed through the kitchen and kissed him breathless, with no explanation given.

Item: As they walked through a park, hands buried in pockets against the cold, Sherlock stopped suddenly, backed John against a nearby wall, and kissed him under the stars.

John had the sense that the universe was waiting for something, a hint about how this was going to go. He craved a relationship, but was wary about saying anything to that effect, because Sherlock was “married to his work”. Kissing and the occasional touch was one thing; that could be chalked up to experimentation and occasionally cheating on Sherlock’s first love. But an actual relationship? Ehhh…give that idea some more time to simmer before saying anything to Sherlock.

“Sherlock?” he called, walking up the stairs with the shopping bag slung over one shoulder. He’d started using a reusable bag when shopping, more environmentally friendly and all that crap. Sherlock had teased him mercilessly about the little step toward political correctness, which John ignored as too normal to comment on.

“In the kitchen.” Sherlock’s voice sounded distant, in that half-dreamy place he found when he was in the hands of science. Smiling to himself, John came around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks, his free hand tightening into a fist.

Sherlock was standing over his microscope, frowning over whatever he was working on. He wore nice trousers and bare feet, typical for a day in at the flat, but instead of his usual button-up shirt, he was wearing one of John’s jumpers, the grey cable-knit one John particularly liked. Since John was rounder in the chest and torso than the detective, the jumper hung loosely on Sherlock’s skinny frame, making him look like a kid who’d stolen his da’s clothing. That was a little weird, but John was used to having his things raided on a near-daily basis. The jumper theft didn’t bother him. The chain around Sherlock’s neck, that bothered him. A lot.

The American soldiers he worked with called them “dog tags”, a term that should have bothered his English sensibilities a lot more than it actually did. Officially, they were “identity discs”, and that term _did_ bother him. John always called his round bits of metal just his “tags”, compromising between the government’s need to give him an identity and the typical crude American every-soldier-is-someone’s-dog humor. He’d worn those silly bits of cheap metal as his only jewelry for ten years or thereabouts, from the day he graduated officer’s boot camp and received his commission. They’d been everywhere with him, on multiple deployments, through sleepless nights and endless days, and while he didn’t consider them part of his identity like other soldiers he knew, they had once been a part of his body.

In order to get those tags, Sherlock would have needed to go into John’s room, go into John’s closet, find the lockbox where he kept everything important to him from his military days, and pick the lock. That was a hellacious invasion of privacy, even for Sherlock, and John felt the hot rage build in the pit of his stomach.

“What the _hell_ are you doing with my tags?” John demanded. The shopping bag dropped from his shoulder with the distinct sound of broken glass as he took two long, angry steps from the doorway to the table and grabbed his tags off Sherlock’s chest. The detective jerked backwards, his eyes wide with surprise and pain as John followed him a half step and yanked the chain over the messy curls. He wasn’t willing to break the chain (or hurt Sherlock, but that was secondary at the moment). “These are _mine_ , Sherlock! Not something you can grab whenever you damn well feel like it, all right? I _earned_ these!”

Sherlock stared at John, leaning back a little. “I’m…sorry,” he said.

John took a deep breath, ready to continue shouting, to continue being angry, but there was something in Sherlock’s eyes that stopped him. So he let the breath out in a slow hiss. “Why, Sherlock?” he asked.

“I needed your input,” Sherlock said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world to say. “And you weren’t here.”

“So…you stole my jumper and my tags, to get my input. You realize that sounds completely insane, right?”

“Perhaps it sounds insane, but the logic is clear. Your jumper smells like you, and your tags were attached to your body for a significant amount of time. So they still have a piece of your essence, so to speak. They even still have your blood on them, have you noticed that?”

John flipped the tags over in his hand and looked. Sure enough, the bottom one was lightly splattered with dark red spots he immediately recognized as blood. His blood, from when he almost died. God, that was just a little creepy. “Do you understand what it means when a soldier is given these tags?” he asked quietly.

“Of course. They’re for purposes of identification if a soldier is too wounded to say who they are and what blood type they need for a transfusion. Or so the appropriate religious authority is summoned for a funeral, if necessary…”

“No,” John interrupted. “I mean, yes, logistically, you’re absolutely right. But a soldier doesn’t get these until he’s gone through boot camp. Until he’s almost _graduated_ boot camp, in fact.” He held up the tags. “These say that I’ve earned the right to protect my Queen and my country, to my dying breath if necessary. These say that I am a soldier, part of a brotherhood that’s hundreds of years old. When I wear these, I’m not alone. And holy Christ, Sherlock, I miss being part of that sometimes.”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked from the tags to John’s face and back again several times, as if the movement helped him understand the sentiment attached to those small objects. “Oh,” he said quietly. “But…you’re not alone. Not now, not really.”

John lowered his hand slowly, the tags clinking on their chain. Because Sherlock was right, as annoying as that thought was. He _had_ been alone before meeting Sherlock, in those horrible weeks after returning to England and realizing he wasn’t a soldier anymore. The paperwork for his medical discharge only underlined the utter loneliness he felt when he woke up at the usual time for PT and couldn’t go back to sleep when he remembered he was crippled, broken, unable to serve his country and his Queen. And now, here he was, serving again in a different capacity.

“I guess not,” he admitted, twirling the tags around on their chain. “Not anymore.” He held up the tags again. “That doesn’t make taking these all right.”

“I didn’t realize you attached so much meaning to them,” Sherlock drawled. “But I’ve never been a soldier.”

“No, you have too many problems with authority to ever do well in a military environment,” John said, surprised by a smile. “For those of us who crave discipline, the tags represent armor of a sort.”

Sherlock pressed his palms together under his chin, obviously provoked into deeper thought by John’s seemingly-innocuous comment. “I know!” he exclaimed after a moment. “Stay here; I’ll be back in a moment.” With that, he darted out of the kitchen and out of John’s line of sight. Curious, John turned and leaned a little to see what Sherlock was doing.

“Close your eyes!” Sherlock called from around the corner.

“Sherlock, I swear to God…”

“Yes, yes, just close your eyes!”

Muttering under his breath, John shut his eyes and waited. He heard Sherlock approaching him from behind, and the light dancing step he used to get around the broken glass on the floor. Usually, the sound of anyone, even someone he liked, approaching from behind would get him keyed up and ready to fight. Not Sherlock. For some inexplicable reason, he trusted Sherlock enough to remain calm, his hands loose at his sides as he listened to Sherlock getting closer.

“Hold your arms out,” Sherlock instructed, and John startled. Sherlock was a lot closer than he’d guessed. The man walked like a cat. But he did what Sherlock asked, putting his arms out to his sides.

A thick, heavy sleeve slipped over his left arm, and he almost opened his eyes in surprise as he realized what Sherlock was doing. “Sherlock?” he asked as heavy wool slid up his arm to settle on his shoulder.

“Shush, John,” Sherlock said, and there was warm affection in his voice as he slipped John’s other arm into the second coat sleeve. “I’ve wanted to dress you in my coat for a while now. This seemed like a good time.” His hands fussed around the collar for a moment, smoothing it around John’s neck and adjusting the fall around John’s body. “All right, you can open your eyes.”

John did, and looked up into Sherlock’s hectic eyes. The man looked like he always did on a case when things were clicking together in that impossibly-fast mind, except that now he was looking at _John_ with all that bright intensity. “It’s warm,” John said, smoothing a hand over the front of the coat. He couldn’t think of anything else to say under Sherlock’s eyes.

“It does the job,” Sherlock said, shrugging. John knew better; that coat was Sherlock’s version of armor, his way of protecting himself. He wouldn’t let just anyone wear it. Irene had, and stolen it in her game. His ability to dress John in it himself indicated a level of trust John wasn’t aware Sherlock could show.

John twined the chain of his tags around his fingers and smiled a little. “Do you know what it means when a soldier gives his tags to someone?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Sherlock admitted, his long fingers pausing on the collar of the coat. “But based on the level of sentiment you attach to them…”

“Shush,” John said, shaking the chain out and catching it in the fingers of both hands. “Call it foolish sentiment if you like. But a soldier only gives his tags to someone who holds his heart.” He put the chain around Sherlock’s neck. He held the actual tags in his hand a moment, pressing them against Sherlock’s chest over his heart. “Wear them if you like, and take them for what they mean.” He couldn’t bring himself to say “I love you”, but he hoped Sherlock understood.

Sherlock picked the tags off his chest, really looking at them. “Thank you,” he said at last. “I’ll return the jumper tonight, all right?”

“That would be appreciated. It doesn’t fit you right.”

John wore Sherlock’s coat around the flat for the rest of the day before hanging it up on the hook again. They didn’t talk about it anymore, but Sherlock returned the jumper and didn’t take off John’s tags.

Item: Sherlock sometimes looked at the tags with a faraway look when he thought John wasn’t looking.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((For the record, I spent a day staring at this prompt on my desktop, trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to get them in costumes. And then my brain decided to tinker with the idea, and this is the result. Sorry, not sorry…))

Day Seven: Cosplay

“Come _on_ , Sherlock, please? For me?”

“I don’t understand why you want me to wear this…thing.”

“It’s a joke, all right?”

“But it’s mocking everything I do. Everything _you_ do, for goodness’ sake!”

“Sherlock…” John ran his hands through his hair. “It’s just for a party. One night, all right?”

Sherlock sneered at the costume hanging on the back of the sitting room door, wrapping his dressing gown tighter around himself. John stood next to him, his arms crossed over his chest. All right, fine, so he didn’t like the idea of dressing up as a stodgy Victorian doctor either, but at least he was willing to go with the spirit of the thing. Lestrade had invited them to a costume party, a sort of “welcome to the New Year” thing after the headaches the real New Year always brought the police department. The theme was “the old-fashioned version of your real job”. That was causing some trouble, since there wasn’t such a thing as consulting detective back in the old days, so John had improvised.

John tucked his hands into his waistcoat, adjusting it with a “harrumph”. Sherlock glanced sideways at him, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “You look ridiculous,” the detective said.

“I know,” John said, adjusting the watch chain he’d had Sherlock “borrow” from his brother.

“I like it anyway.” Sherlock sounded perplexed. “Why do I like it?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” John shrugged. “Because you’re not used to seeing me in anything but my jumpers and jeans?”

Sherlock turned to look at him, his hands coming up to press together under his chin as he scrutinized John from top to toe. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “Though I think it has something to do with your usual attire. These clothes suit you, actually fit you.”

“Hey!” John protested. “I like my jumpers!”

“Preference has nothing to do with it,” Sherlock said, waving a hand impatiently. “Your jumpers are loose and unbecoming. A well-fitted three-piece suit accents the muscles you’ve retained since your return from Afghanistan, and your well-shaped body.”

John blinked rapidly. “…What?” he asked, his voice suddenly raspy. He cleared his throat quickly and tried again. “Well-shaped body?”

Sherlock gave him another “I’m being patient because you’re being slow” look, one of the few looks that still made John want to punch his flatmate after all this time. “Biologically speaking, you are ideally shaped for procreation. Your features are symmetrical, you’re a bit short, but you make up for the height deficit by having everything in good proportion. Well, I _say_ everything, but I can’t be completely sure, since you’ve never let me see you naked…”

John choked, swallowing a mouthful of spit down the wrong tube. “Sherlock Holmes!” he exclaimed.

“What? You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.” Sherlock smiled, that slow dangerous smirk he got when he was about to do something monumentally stupid. “I propose a compromise.”

“Um…what sort of compromise?” John knew better by now than to agree to anything Sherlock said without checking the fine print.

“You let me see you. All of you. And I’ll wear your stupid detective costume and be downright sweet to everyone at the party.” He considered that last point for a second. “Unless Anderson and Donovan are going to be there, I won’t be sweet to them. But I’ll be civil, and that’s almost as good considering it’s them…”

“Sherlock,” John said, raising his voice a bit to cut Sherlock off. “Let’s go back to that earlier point, shall we? You want me to strip naked? Why?”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked off to the left, probably one of the most obvious liar signs John had ever seen in his life. “Curiosity,” he said.

“Want to try the truth this time?” 

One of Sherlock’s dark eyebrows went up in an expression that looked scarily close to respect. “Not bad,” he murmured. “Truth? I _am_ curious, about your body. About your scar, any freckles or moles you might have…you, John.” One hand came up to touch the tags Sherlock wore under his shirt at all times, and John made the mental connection.

“Oh,” he said quietly, blushing all the way to the roots of his hair. “Sweet, is it? You’ll actually be sweet?”

“As honey. Or you can exact some horrible form of revenge on me.”

John smiled and leaned closer to Sherlock. “I’ll hold you to that,” he murmured, intrigued by the tiny shiver that ran through Sherlock’s body. “I’ll be right back, then.”

“What?” Sherlock actually looked slightly panicked as John started to walk out of the room.

“Not comfortable with an actual strip-tease, Sherlock. You want to see me naked, fine, but on my terms.”

Sherlock settled back a little, relaxing just a hair. “Oh. By all means, then, carry on.”

Smiling and shaking his head, John walked up the stairs to his room and closed the door. A silly precaution, really, since he was about to be bare-arsed naked in front of his flatmate, and dear _God_ , what was he doing? He glanced down at his left hand and sighed. The shaking might stop when he was in a genuinely life-or-death stressful situation, but right at the moment, it was shaking like a leaf.

John took a deep breath and looked at his reflection in the dresser mirror as he began undoing the nice clothes, setting each piece neatly on his bed as he took it off. The Army didn’t leave much room for bashfulness, so he was relatively comfortable with his body. All right, so there were things he didn’t like. He was in good shape from chasing all over London with Sherlock, but he still had a bit of a belly he couldn’t quite shed, and of course, there was the scar. He leaned closer to the mirror, acknowledging that imperfection. It had healed rather nicely over the last year, turning into a pale divot in his skin. He didn’t have to turn to see the exit wound; that was rather messier than the entrance wound.

Kicking off his shoes, John shed his trousers and his pants, looking himself over nervously before he grabbed his dressing gown and wrapped it around himself as he headed down the stairs to the sitting room.

Sherlock was sitting bolt upright in his chair, tapping his fingers to a rhythm only he could hear as he stared at the stairs, waiting for John to appear. As soon as John’s bare foot touched the landing, Sherlock was out of his chair like a shot, his hands pressing together under his chin as he approached John.

“Ah, ah,” John warned, lifting a hand to stop Sherlock. “Close your eyes, all right?”

“John…” Sherlock sighed, tipping his head to the side as he stopped in his tracks. “It’s not like you have anything I don’t.”

“Unless you got shot in the shoulder and didn’t tell me, I beg to differ,” John replied dryly.

“Really?” Sherlock looked John up and down. “That’s what makes you shy enough to come down in your dressing gown? Not your genitals or anything like that?”

John shrugged. “You’re a guy too. Like you said, we have the same stuff. And I was in the Army for ten years; you learn not to be shy pretty quickly.” Except in situations that might turn toward the sexual, but he carefully didn’t mention that. He was too unsure of his footing to say anything about that yet. “Now. Close your eyes, or I go back upstairs and get dressed again.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Sherlock sighed, but a grin was pulling at the corners of his mouth as he closed his eyes. Just to be sure, John walked behind Sherlock before taking a deep breath and letting his dressing gown drop away. He noticed that Sherlock’s spine got straighter as the cloth rustled, and he wondered what exactly was going through that amazing mind.

“All right,” John said, folding the dressing gown over the back of his armchair. “You can turn around now.”

Sherlock rose up on the balls of his feet, turning in a graceful pirouette that spoke of dance training somewhere in his background. He didn’t open his eyes until he’d settled back on his heels, and John saw his whole body expand and contract with a deep breath as his electric blue eyes settled on John.

John was used to watching Sherlock study something of interest as an observer, able to maintain emotional distance between himself and Sherlock as Sherlock took something apart with his eyes and worked out how all the pieces fit together. He’d never been the subject of that interest, and he hadn’t realized how powerfully arousing it would be to have Sherlock’s undivided attention. Sherlock’s hands came together again, the fingertips pressing against his mouth as he walked closer to John.

Looking back later, the whole walk-around probably took Sherlock no more than three minutes. To John, standing in the middle of Sherlock’s slow circles, it felt like an eternity. Sherlock didn’t touch, didn’t get within easy reaching distance. And yet, John couldn’t stop trembling under the intensity of Sherlock’s regard as his flatmate touched every inch of him with his eyes. John had the sense Sherlock was memorizing, cataloguing, forming hypothesis and theorizing.

At last, Sherlock stopped behind John and stepped closer, his jacket lapels brushing John’s shoulder blades as he whispered, “May I?”

John wasn’t sure what Sherlock was asking permission for, but he nodded anyway on the theory that Sherlock’s wild-brained plans usually had interesting results. He felt Sherlock’s smile against his ear, and then the detective was _right there_ , wrapping his arms around John’s waist from behind, pressing his fully-clothed body against John’s nakedness. John’s knees went weak, leaning him against Sherlock for a brief moment before he was able to recover himself. He’d managed to keep his body under control until that moment; feeling Sherlock clothed against him, powerful as John was vulnerable, killed the last of his control.

“Interesting,” Sherlock murmured as John’s breathing sped up, his heart rate going through the roof as his cock began swelling in arousal. “You seem particularly responsive to this form of stimulation.”

“Maybe just a little,” John said, doing his best to keep his voice level.

Sherlock stepped away and moved back in front of John, staring into John’s eyes. How fascinating that their eyes could be grouped into the same color group, and yet be completely different. John thought of his own eyes as being like still water, with more danger than usually showed on the surface. Sherlock’s changeable shades of blue, though, were amazing. They ranged from the hottest part of a flame to the sharp electricity of a lightning bolt. “You are very well put together,” Sherlock said, his eyes flicking away from John’s. John had the startling sense that Sherlock was suddenly afraid to look too closely. What was he afraid he’d see?

“Thank you,” John said. “You’ll wear the costume, right?”

“I did promise,” Sherlock pointed out, sounding a little miffed that John had brought the subject up.

“Yes, because you’ve never ‘forgotten’ to keep a promise,” John said, rolling his eyes at his flatmate.

“Not when it’s a promise made to you.”

John settled back on his heels, surprised by that comment. He was aware that Sherlock regarded most rules of society as mere guidelines, especially the one about keeping promises made. He’d watched Sherlock break promise after promise. But never one he’d made to John. “Oh,” he said.

Sherlock looked at the kitchen clock, leaning a little to see around the corner. His curls brushed John’s shoulder, making him shiver. “We’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon,” the detective said.

“I’ll go get dressed.” John hesitated a moment before slipping his hand into Sherlock’s hair, tugging the detective’s face level with his so he could kiss him thoroughly. Sherlock’s body stiffened briefly, then the detective relaxed enough to rest a hand on John’s shoulder. The heel of his hand rested on the scar, sending pleasant waves of warmth through John as he deepened the kiss. This was the first time John had taken the initiative and kissed Sherlock first, which made for an interesting role reversal when he was naked. Then John pulled away with a small kiss left on Sherlock’s lips as a promise. “I’ll be back down in fifteen minutes. Will you be ready by then?”

Sherlock sneered a little at the costume again. “Even the cape?” he asked.

“Mm-hm.”

“Fine.”

Twenty minutes later, after John had spent his time grinning at Sherlock’s sullen expression and how well the costume worked on the lanky detective, the two of them were in the cab to Lestrade’s house.

“I don’t understand the bubble pipe,” Sherlock said, examining it. “If I have to carry a pipe, can’t it be a real one?”

“The bubbles are funnier.”

“You’re lucky I have a nicotine patch. It might not be enough.”

“Sweet, remember. You promised.”

Sherlock slumped in his seat, but he reached over and caught John’s hand in his. “I did,” he said.

And he kept that promise, turning the charm up and putting a sheath on his wit as he interacted with everyone at the party. He was even civil to Anderson and Donovan, which was almost enough to get him nominated for sainthood, as they were being particularly nasty. John found himself watching his flatmate rather more than normal that night, remembering the feel of that solid body pressed against his from behind and wondering who was going to take the next step. If there was going to be next step.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((I wanted this to be so much less domestic than it became…but that’s all right, because the massive feels are coming up. Like I’ve said before, I’m not good at fluff, so enjoy this fluff while it lasts.))

**Day Eight: Shopping**

“Why exactly did I have to come along on this little…outing?”

“Because you were the one who set the curtains on fire, and you’re going to help me get new ones.”

“Again, why? You’re the one who cares about things like that. You could have just taken my card and gotten whatever you like.”

“Yeah, well, being out in the shop is part of your punishment for setting things on fire and sending Mrs. Hudson into hysterics.” John scowled at his flatmate. “Now. Help me out here. Any color preferences?”

“Black,” Sherlock said, his hands buried in his coat pockets and his chin dragging on his chest. He looked like a sulky little boy in an overgrown body.

“Black doesn’t go with anything in the flat, and is a bloody depressing color.”

“Perfect.”

“ _Sherlock_.”

“What?”

“Can you pretend to care about something outside of yourself for two seconds?”

Sherlock looked up and down the aisle. The shop was nearly deserted, a half hour before closing; they were almost perfectly alone. Taking his hands out of his pockets, Sherlock stalked up to John and stopped a handbreadth away, leaning into John’s personal space. “I don’t have to,” he said. His voice was low, warm, and surprisingly tender.

John blinked up at Sherlock, looking into those startling eyes. “What do you…?” But he stopped, realizing the answer to his question had already been provided. He had said ‘pretend to care’, and Sherlock said he didn’t need to. As he’d learned from Sherlock (over and over and over…), phrasing was important. “You don’t need to pretend to care,” he said. “Because you actually do care.”

Sherlock’s face twitched in the tiniest of smiles. “I knew you’d start listening eventually. I just don’t care about the damn curtains. Get whatever color you like; you’re the one who cares about that stuff. If you’re happy with them, I’m happy.”

“Yeah?” John asked, daring to stroke the back of his fingers against Sherlock’s cheek.

“Yeah,” Sherlock affirmed, bending a bit and kissing John’s mouth.

John’s brain shorted out at the kiss. He’d been teased with kisses for the last month and a half, and he’d had about enough. He grabbed Sherlock’s lapels and shoved him into a shelf, following and kissing back with all the pent-up passion he’d felt for the last several months. Sherlock made a surprised sound into John’s mouth, but he made no attempt to stop the doctor (John knew he could if he wanted to; he’d seen the judo certificate on Sherlock’s wall and seen him in action). Instead, those long-fingered pale hands rested on John’s shoulders, holding him in place and silently encouraging the kiss.

“Listen,” John said, tearing his mouth free but not stepping back. “I don’t…do this without some kind of commitment. Kissing, I mean. It means something to me, all those layers of sentiment that might not mean that much to you, but are really, really important to me…”

“Who said it doesn’t mean anything to me?” Sherlock’s words stopped John dead. “You’re assuming, John. What’s that phrase you like to use when someone else is making an assumption without all the information?”

“Assume just means you make an ass of you and me,” John said automatically. “All right, then, what’s the rest of the information I’m missing?”

“Do you see me kissing anyone else?”

“Um…no?”

“Touching anyone else at all, let alone the way I touch you and allow you to manhandle me?”

“No.”

“Getting anyone else naked in the sitting room under the pretense of study and science?”

“ _Pretense_ …?”

“Do you, John?” Sherlock’s eyes were intense, pinning John to the spot like a bug on a card.

“No,” John admitted. “What…what are you saying, Sherlock?”

“Just as importantly, especially in the sense you meant them, do you see me wearing tokens of sentiment from anyone?” Sherlock fished John’s tags out of his shirt, letting them hang on their plain chain around his neck. They looked oddly out of place against the elegant button-up shirt, little cheap bits of metal against a shirt that probably cost three times as much as the cheap curtains Sherlock had burned.

“No.”

“Then I think you have your answer, don’t you?”

“No!” John exclaimed. “I don’t…I don’t understand, Sherlock…”

Sherlock sighed, running a hand through his dark curls. “You always need things said, don’t you?” he asked. “You know I’m rubbish at words that actually matter.”

“Try,” John said, his eyes narrowing a little.

Sherlock pursed his lips, considering his words carefully. Given how fast he usually was with retorts and well-placed insults, the fact that he was taking any time at all to think of the right words spoke volumes to John. “We’ve been a couple for a while, in my consideration. We cohabitate, share meals and squabble over who does the laundry. Beyond any of that, you are the only person I am interested in kissing or seeing naked. We haven’t moved to the more physical side that seems typical for people who are…together, but I figured that would be a mere matter of time.”

“I’ve mentioned I’m not gay, right?” A stupid objection, given the kiss he’d just shared with Sherlock, but the words were reflexive.

“Yes, multiple times. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but being gay is not a requirement for loving someone of your own gender.”

“You just contradicted yourself.”

“Not at all.” Sherlock leaned back against a shelf, crossing his arms. “You’re completely straight; I’ve observed your patterns for attraction and arousal, and you show no signs of being attracted to males. Except when you look at me.”

“So…is there a term for that?” John couldn’t deny it, not without Sherlock calling him out as a liar.

Sherlock shrugged, a slight gesture that looked far more elegant than such gestures should rightfully look. “I’ve heard it called ‘straight-with-an-exception’. Call it whatever you like; titles don’t matter so much.”

“They do to me!” John paced a few steps away, running a hand through his hair. “I like knowing what I am. What _we_ are, for God’s sake!”

“We’re John and Sherlock, like we’ve always been,” Sherlock said, frowning. “Isn’t that enough?”

“John and Sherlock, flatmates? John and Sherlock, boyfriends?” Sherlock made a little gagging sound in the back of his throat, and John laughed. “All right, so not boyfriends, I agree, it’s a juvenile term.”

“Very much so,” Sherlock agreed dryly. “John and Sherlock, partners.”

Partners. John rolled the word around in his mind, considering it. In a real sense, they had been partners since the day John moved into 221B, since the word had non-sexual connotations as well. But…he liked it in the relationship sense as well. “Partners,” he said, trying the word out loud.

Sherlock grinned. “It sounds right, doesn’t it?”

“Rather better than ‘boyfriends’,” John said, just for the look Sherlock shot him.

“Never use that term in my presence again,” Sherlock said, backing John against the shelf opposite his, bracing his arms on either side of John. “We’re not in school anymore.”

John cupped Sherlock’s face in his hands and lightly kissed those full lips. “All right,” he said when he pulled away a little. “I won’t. You’re my partner.”

“Better,” Sherlock said. “Now. Let’s get those curtains and get ourselves home. I have a couple experiments on the boil.”

And John just had to laugh, because that was Sherlock from head to toe. John knew him well after a little over a year as flatmates, the good, the bad, and the frightening. It was all…fine. It was all just Sherlock, from top to bottom and back to front.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Trigger Warning: A mass shooting and reactions to it.
> 
> All right, I’m aware this is probably a Bit Not Good, and I might lose readers over this. That’s all right. This ficlet is my reaction to the Connecticut shooting, because that’s how I handle tragedies: I write in a BAMF to do what I wish could have been done, to make things be All Right again. Also, this is set after The Fall. Direct all hate-mail to the reviews, it’s all right. I have mentioned I’m not good at fluff…))

**Day Nine: Hanging Out With Friends**

The door shutting behind John made an unbearably loud echoing sound, and he paused at the bottom of the seventeen stairs, closing his eyes in an effort to regain some control over himself. It had been a year since Sherlock’s suicide. Some days, he felt like he was doing all right, like he’d picked up most of the pieces his heart had shattered into and was able to move along. And then something like this happened, and he realized just how close to the edge he really was.

Mrs. Hudson was out, he knew, visiting her sister. While he was usually alone since Sherlock’s death, the house felt particularly empty now. He walked up the stairs, feeling like each foot weighed a hundred pounds.

“Hello, Billy,” he said to the skull as he walked into the flat, dropping his keys on the table by the door. “You should have been at the clinic today. It was…quite a day.” His breathing hitched as he pulled his pistol out of its hidden waistband holster and put it on the mantle. He didn’t want to touch it at the moment, not after the day he’d had.

“You picked a bad day to be dead,” he whispered, sitting in his armchair and burying his face in his hands. That turned out to be a really bad idea; closing his eyes gave his imagination full range to play back the horrors of the day.

He’d thought he’d left the battlefield behind when Sherlock died, he really did. Lestrade checked in with him every once in a while, and they went out to have a pint or two once a month, but the detective inspector didn’t call him in on cases. Sometimes, John could go weeks without noticing the small tells in the world around him, the hints that there was more under the surface. He stared at his gun, his jaw muscles tightening as he ground his teeth together. And sometimes, like today, the battlefield slapped him hard across the face, reminding him of the life he used to live with Sherlock. His partner in every way that mattered. The selfish bastard who had taken his own life and left John without a rudder.

Realistically, he knew it wasn’t fair to blame Sherlock for today. Regardless of the detective’s death, the lunatic with a gun would have come to the clinic that day and gone on his killing spree. John just knew he would have felt better to get Sherlock’s incessant texts, asking if he was all right, what could he see, where was the shooter? Of course, he’d be furious at the time, since the sound of a text going off could compromise his position, but…

Goddammit. John got up and got a beer from the fridge, trying not to think. Of course, not thinking about the horrible day he’d just lived through was like not thinking about pink elephants: the more he tried not to think, the more he remembered the screams, the distant gunshots…

It had started just like any other day at the clinic, kids with runny noses, referrals to specialists, check-ups. Mundane, boring, and a viable distraction from the empty flat he went home to every day. Admittedly, most days at the clinic before Sherlock’s death hadn’t involved him carrying his British Army Browning L9A1 (and Christ, but he couldn’t help but hear Moriarty’s voice describing his gun in Sherlock’s hands every time he looked at the Browning mark on the side of the slide), but that had also become common since Moriarty and Sherlock had played their deadly game across London.

John had just finished doing a well-child check on a set of triplets when he heard the first gunshot. It was muffled enough that almost anyone else would have dismissed it as a car backfiring or something equally mundane. John Watson, Army doctor, never made that mistake. He turned to the mother and the three little boys, as alike as three peas in a pod, and said, “Stay here. When I’ve left, prop the chair under the door. Do not let anyone in unless they knock four times. Do you understand me?”

“Doctor, what…?”

“If you want to live through today, you will _do as I say_.” All traces of John the Civilian dropped away, leaving him the Army Captain who was accustomed to being obeyed. He didn’t shout; he didn’t need to, not when he’d found the Voice again. “Push the exam bed against the door too, and stay on the floor.” Two more gunshots, in rapid succession. “ _Now_.”

He didn’t stay to see if they did what he said; there wasn’t time. Each gunshot meant someone’s life was in danger, if not stolen away entirely. As he strode down the halls, following the sound of screams, he ordered everyone he passed to either get out of the building or take cover.

The thought of hiding himself never even occurred to him. Sherlock had always said there was no such thing as heroes. John agreed, which probably would have surprised the detective if he’d ever known. There were very bad people in the world, and ordinary people. But when the bad people started hurting those around them, ordinary people found that flash of steel in them. John just happened to be an ordinary person who had trained that steel into a weapon. He wasn’t a hero. But he was a protector.

As he approached the source of the gunshots, John shifted into battle mode, drawing his gun and keeping to a low crouch as he moved from cover to cover. The sound was deafening, but familiar as the gun chattered out a few more rounds. Russian make; they sounded subtly different than the American rifles. John wondered absently how exactly such a weapon had gotten into England and decided it didn’t matter. He was getting close.

He stopped around a corner from the noise and peered carefully. The gunman was immediately recognizable; he was the only one standing in the middle of a waiting room, pacing back and forth. Everyone else was kneeling in front of the chairs, hands laced behind their heads.

_‘My God, he’s just a kid,’_ John thought, catching a glimpse of the gunman’s face before he pulled back around the corner, regrouping himself and planning furiously. His hands were steady, but he wasn’t confident about his shot. If he missed, there were people behind the gunman. One of the three rules of using a weapon: always know what’s in the backstop. There were civilians in the line of fire. Not Good, absolutely Not Good at all. But if he didn’t take a shot, someone else would die or get hurt. He could hear someone screaming in pain, little burbling sounds in their voice that indicated a lung or gut shot.

The gunman snarled something and another round of bullets tore the air. John felt his left shoulder jerk instinctively, and he swore under his breath at his body betraying him. It always did that these days, since he was shot in Afghanistan. It was a tick like the old limp, but not one Sherlock had been able to cure him of. No, do _not_ think about Sherlock right now, the distraction is unwelcome. The burbling screams stopped; had the lung-shot victim been the most recent target?

John peeked again, just in time to see the gunman level on the rest of people in the waiting room and begin shooting. “No!” John shouted, his voice drowned by the deafening explosions in the small space. He shifted around the corner, keeping low, and shot at the gunman.

He missed his first shot, breaking out a window over the man’s head, and the man—no, boy, he couldn’t have been much older than eighteen or nineteen—spun around and saw John. His eyes went huge as he saw the gun in John’s hand, as if he couldn’t possibly believe someone else in the country had a weapon. The rifle in his hands came up, and John ducked, rolling away just in time to avoid getting shot. His shoulder screamed at him, but he ignored it for the moment. He’d pay for this later, he knew, he always did, but right now there wasn’t time to count the personal cost.

Through the ringing in his ears (why hadn’t he grabbed the earplugs he kept in his exam room?), John heard the gunman getting closer, his heavy boots thumping on the tile. John took a deep breath, making sure his hands were steady, and popped back around the corner, taking the shot as soon as he was clear of the wall.

The gunman stopped cold, rocking backward as he looked down at the new hole in his chest. “You…you shot me!” he exclaimed, and his voice was high and breathy in pain and shock. “You can’t… _no one_ can…this is…”

Checking to make sure no one from the waiting room was looking at that moment, John stalked over to the kid and pressed his pistol against the gunman’s temple. “Enough,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

John startled a bit, pulling himself out of the day’s memories. None of the patients had seen him shoot the gunman, and he’d been in a part of the hallway that didn’t have cameras. So the current going theory was the gunman had shot himself after killing five patients and wounding seven more. The news was all over the telly, with politicians screaming about the need for more gun control and prevention of this sort of thing. It didn’t matter; nothing ever changed.

A knock came at the door, and John jumped to his feet, his hands clenching at his sides as he tried to control his reaction to sudden sounds. “Who is it?” he called.

“It’s Greg, John. Can I come in?”

There were a lot of messages in those two sentences. If Lestrade had worked out that John had killed the gunman and was here officially, he’d introduce himself as “Detective Inspector Lestrade”, and there wouldn’t be a question at the end of that. Using both sets of first names indicated that Greg was here as a friend. He snatched his gun off the mantle and slipped it back into the waistband holster at the small of his back. Greg being here as a friend meant this was about the shooting. No sense in leaving out a weapon that would match the ballistics and force Greg to become Detective Inspector Lestrade.

When he opened the door, Greg was standing there with an eighteen pack of the dark ale they both liked so much. “I come bearing booze,” he said, holding up the box. “May I come in?”

“Sure. I can’t promise to be sociable, though,” John said, stepping back into the flat and letting him in.

“After a shooting? I’d be amazed if you were sociable. That’s not the point.”

“There’s a point to being around a friend?” John asked with a crooked smile, taking the box from Greg and carrying it into the kitchen.

“A shooting’s a hard thing to live through, even when you’ve been through firefights before,” Greg observed. He went to the cabinet and got out two glasses without being asked; he’d been over a few times and knew where everything was. “And I can’t imagine how hard it would be to be in something like that and not be able to defend myself.”

John’s eyes flicked up and sideways, checking to see if Greg was fishing. If he was, he was doing a better job of hiding it than usual; there wasn’t a trace of suspicion in his voice or face. “Yeah,” he said, getting out the ice cube tray and two of the beers.

A light tap at the kitchen door startled both men, and John was interested to see that Greg’s hand went to his hip, where he usually wore his duty piece. Mrs. Hudson stuck her head through the door. “John, dear, I just saw the news. Are you all right?”

Something inside John relaxed, and he managed a real smile at his motherly landlady. “I’m fine, Mrs. Hudson, thanks. It wasn’t…pleasant, by any means. But it’s over.”

“I just don’t understand why someone would do something so wretched,” Mrs. Hudson said, accepting the glass of ale Greg handed her. “What _is_ the world coming to?”

The two men exchanged a glance over her head, and John sighed. “I don’t know, Mrs. Hudson. Come into the sitting room, sit down, please.” 

~~~~~~~~

Across the street, a tall man stood alone, watching the upstairs window. Even his best friend would have trouble identifying him in his jeans and jumper, his hands shoved into the pockets of a short pea coat and his straight blond hair falling to his earlobes. His intense blue eyes remained unchanged, though, and they were fixed on the window, hoping for a sign that John was all right. He’d worked out the identity of the gunman’s killer, of course; child’s play, especially when an officer on the case expressed surprise that the gunman had managed to shoot himself twice, once in the chest and once in the head. But Scotland Yard was being its usual obtuse self, which was probably for the best.

A light came on in the sitting room, and he saw the outlines of three people through the window. Good. John wasn’t alone. It was too dangerous for the tall man to go to him, at least just yet, but it soothed his heart to know John had other people watching out for him. “Be well, my friend,” he said softly, turning the coat collar up automatically as he walked down Baker Street, away from the only place he still considered home. He had to make the world safe for good men like John.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((I’m kind of cheating with this one, since I’m pretty sure the person who came up with the original list meant the cute headband Disney animal ears. I’ve never liked those things, so I went a different direction. Enjoy!))

**Day Ten: With Animal Ears**

When the phone rang at his right hand, John didn’t look up from his patient notes as he picked it up. “Doctor John Watson speaking,” he said, tucking the phone between his head and shoulder as he kept writing.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Watson.” John stopped writing, listening intently to the voice on the other side of the line. It was electronically distorted, but sounded vaguely familiar.

“Who is this?” John asked, already knowing the question was futile; people didn’t use electronic distorters to disguise their voices if they were going to give their names.

“I haven’t much time, Doctor Watson, so you will do me the courtesy of not wasting the little I have, do you understand? You are in tremendous danger.”

“What a surprise,” John said, sitting back in his chair. “I’ve been in danger for the entirety of my adult life and most of my childhood; you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Does the name Jim Moriarty mean anything to you?”

The phone dropped from John’s suddenly nerveless shoulder, clattering on the floor as John shoved his chair backwards with both feet. Moriarty. A name from beyond Sherlock’s grave. He hadn’t heard anything more about the consulting criminal since the deadly game that culminated with Sherlock’s suicide two years ago. That was half the reason he always carried his gun concealed on his person when he left the flat. And now…he bent with a grunt and retrieved the handset from the floor.

“…Doctor Watson? Are you still there?” It was hard to tell with the robotic distorter between them, but John had a feeling the caller was genuinely concerned about the sudden loud noise.

“I’m here,” he said, rolling slowly back to the desk and putting his left hand palm-down on the surface. “I’m…sorry, I haven’t heard that name in two years.”

“I apologize for startling you, but it was necessary to get your attention. One of Moriarty’s underlings has targeted you, Doctor Watson, and several others in England and across the Continent. I don’t know if he’s in England yet,” and there was definite frustration at that last part, “but he plans to head your way, if he hasn’t already started circling you. Have you found pig’s ears pinned to your front door?”

John pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it for a moment. “Pig’s…ears?” he asked, not sure if he should laugh or not.

“Yes, it’s odd, but no one has ever accused murderers of being much for normality.”

“He could just leave a business card.”

“In a sense, the pig’s ears are his business card. I will assume from your reaction that you haven’t been the recipient of such a sign. Excellent; there’s still time.”

“What should I do?” John asked, feeling the weight of his gun heavy against the small of his back.

There was an odd silence from the other side of the line, broken a moment later by a soft chuckle. “You can’t do anything about this problem, Doctor Watson. If you ever got close enough to use your highly illegal handgun, he would have already killed you four or five times over.”

A cold chill ran down John’s spine as he lightly touched the metal of his gun, warmed by its constant contact with his skin. “Then why bother warning me if I can’t do anything?” he asked.

“On the battleground, Doctor Watson, a soldier should always be aware of his surroundings. You believe you are no longer on the battlefield because Sherlock Holmes died. You’re wrong, and that might get you killed.”

“Who the fuck are you?” John snarled, careful to keep his voice low.

“As your American soldier friends would say, stay frosty, Doctor Watson. Be careful out there. I will be in contact.” With that, the strange caller hung up, leaving John to listen to the hum on the open line as he stared at the wall opposite him. He put the phone carefully in its cradle and folded his hands in front of his mouth.

Half a country away, a tall man disconnected a distorter from a public telephone and slipped the pieces into the pockets of his pea coat. “Be careful, John,” he said, touching the tips of his gloved fingers to the receiver.

John spent the next three days sleeping lightly, if at all, his gun always on his person. A few of his patients commented on his tendency to keep an eye on the door all the time. Interestingly enough, every person who noticed was a soldier as well, and they only commented because they did the same thing.

On the evening of the third day, he came home to find pig’s ears pinned to the front door with a knife. He didn’t sleep at all that night, practically mainlining coffee to keep the adrenaline pumping through the long dark watches into the morning.

The next morning was rough, at best. His patient load was low, thankfully, but he had difficulty staying awake as he sat in his office waiting for the day to end. When the phone rang, it startled him wide awake as he grabbed at the receiver. “Doctor John Watson speaking.”

“Losing sleep over the message won’t do any good, Doctor.”

John sprang up, grabbing the phone base and carrying it to a corner away from any windows. He sat on the floor, the base cradled in his lap as he leaned forward intently. “He’s threatened my life, one of the only things I have left to call mine, and you’re going to try and tell me not to worry about it? Fuck you, I’m a soldier and I _can’t_ just let it go.”

Silence for a long, long moment. Then the voice, sounding oddly gentle through the distortion, said, “John, there’s nothing you can do. Truly.”

Goosebumps ran up and down John’s spine. For just a second, he was pretty sure he’d just heard an aural ghost. “Sherlock?” he whispered, his voice cracking.

“Impossible. Sherlock Holmes died.”

True. John shook his head, pulling himself together. God, he needed sleep. “Look, whoever you are, I appreciate the warnings. I guess. But someone is after me, according to you, and if someone’s after me, everyone I care about is in danger too. So either help me, or get the hell out of my way so I can protect the people I care about.”

Again with the weird silence. John thought he heard cars or a train in the background noise, but it was hard to tell through the distortion. “Very well,” the voice said at last. “I suppose dissuading you is a waste of my time and energy. Keep a watch out, Doctor Watson.” The stranger hung up with a hard ‘click’, indicating more temper than his (his? Probably, a woman’s voice would sound higher even through the distortion) words had.

John shook his head slowly, hanging up the receiver as he got up. God, for just a second, he’d been so _sure_ he was talking to Sherlock. Ridiculous, of course. If Sherlock was actually alive (impossible, John had touched his dead arm, been to his grave, it had been _two bloody years_ ), he’d text with that stupid priggish little ‘SH’ at the end of his text. Sherlock hated talking on the phone, and always had.

Somehow, he made it through the rest of his day without falling asleep. Sarah eyed him with concern as he clocked out, but left him alone as he walked outside and hailed a cab.

When John arrived at 221B, he stopped outside the door, his keys in his hand, and turned a slow circle on the sidewalk, looking around. For just a moment, he thought he felt Sherlock’s warm presence behind him, whispering, “Don’t just look, really _observe_ , John.” Something had changed in the neighborhood. But what? The graffiti was the same, a mixture of old and new layered on top of each other. He didn’t see anyone who looked particularly out of place, and no one seemed to be watching him. His eyes flicked up to the edges of the buildings. Sherlock had once observed that no one ever looked up, content to spend their lives with their eyes planted firmly on the ground ahead of them.

Remembering Sherlock’s disparaging comment saved his life. John saw the barrel of a sniper rifle in time to fling himself onto the ground by the stairs. A gunshot went off, and people around him began screaming as he swore under his breath. Dammit, he was _retired_ from the battlefield! Two more gunshots, the last one chipping off a bit of concrete above his head, and John drew his gun. All right, fine, someone wanted to take potshots at him on a crowded street. This was already bad, he couldn’t make it much worse with his shots.

Just as he popped up over the edge of the stairs, another gunshot rang out. To the uneducated ear, it would have sounded exactly like the first few shots. John knew better. A brief cry followed the last shot, and a body tumbled from a rooftop. John set his teeth against the PTSD flashback, shaking his head hard as he holstered his gun. No, this wasn’t June 12th, no, he wasn’t in front of Bart’s, no, the dead body lying on the sidewalk wasn’t Sherlock. He looked around as the flashback let him go, checking for the second shooter. No sign of him or her, not even a flash of a gun barrel in the fading evening light.

He ran across the street, dodging cars and pushing his way through the small crowd that had gathered around the body. “Let me through, I’m a doctor!” he shouted, shoving hard at people. They parted reluctantly, letting him through to kneel beside the body. Despite his knowledge that it couldn’t possibly be Sherlock, John still breathed a sigh of relief when he turned the body and didn’t recognize the battered face. He checked for a pulse out of habit; he knew as soon as he touched the body that the man was dead.

On the roof of 221B, a tall slender man scooted back from the edge, breathing hard and holding a sniper rifle against his narrow chest. That had been too close for comfort. He wasn’t a marksman, not like John. If John hadn’t been there to distract the other shooter…he shook his head, blond hair flicking the corners of his eyes. Let it be. John was safe, for the moment, and another strand of Moriarty’s network had just been broken. He took his rifle apart and put the pieces in a duffle bag before climbing down the fire escape and disappearing into the dark alleyways. Not much longer now.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Dear whoever came up with this list: I fucking hated this prompt. Really, I relish challenges, but getting either half of Johnlock into animal pajamas was almost beyond me, especially since I wanted Sherlock to not come back until the next prompt, so it had to be more angst than fluff. So thanks for all the other cool ideas, but seriously. This one can go die somewhere.
> 
> Sincerely, Vana))

**Day Eleven: Wearing Kigurumis**

There are two sorts of disguise. The first relies on misdirection and shadow, allowing the wearer to blend into a background and pass unnoticed with barely a ripple in the world. Specialists in that sort of disguise can walk through life without attracting a second glance, as long as they don’t go outside the area where that disguise fit. The second, though, relies every bit on misdirection by demanding attention everywhere it goes, calling the eye with garishly loud colors and distracting away from the actual issue at hand.

John Watson had learned how to use the second sort of disguise from none other than Sherlock Holmes. After all, while Sherlock didn’t like bright colors, he did know all about drama and how to draw the eye away from whatever he was doing that he shouldn’t be doing. John wasn’t good at that sort of flamboyance, which he suspected came from Sherlock’s posh background. Instead, when he needed to do something without anyone knowing it was him, he relied on a purer sort of disguise: an animal suit.

The logic was flawless. People made a point of not seeing adults who wore animal suits, reasoning that anyone over the age of about ten who willingly wore something like that either didn’t want to be seen or were mentally disturbed and _shouldn’t_ be seen. Maybe the second was truer than John wanted to admit; almost three years had passed since Sherlock’s death, and he hadn’t managed to move past the trauma. A part of him cuddled the pain close, like a beloved teddy bear, unwilling to let go or move on.

Looking around carefully, John pulled the animal suit out of the small bag he used to carry it around and stepped into it, zipping it up and pulling the hood over his head. Humming to himself, he pulled out the can of spray paint and walked to the wall he’d designated for his graffiti today.

Far away, tucked into a nice office with a mug of tea cooling at his elbow, Mycroft Holmes watched John Watson spray-paint “I Believe in Sherlock Holmes” on the wall through one of his many security cameras. His mouth tightened as he shook his head slightly. Doctor Watson had been fighting a one-man war to salvage Sherlock’s reputation for the better part of three years. So far, he was winning; the world was buzzing about the genius detective. But if anyone saw John Watson now…he picked up his mobile phone and sent a text to a number no one else in the world knew.

It’s time for you to come home. –MH

A moment later, his phone buzzed with the answer: I can’t yet. –SH

Your doctor is losing his mind. –MH

John is strong. He’ll make it longer than you think. –SH

Mycroft took a picture of John in the animal suit, working so meticulously, and sent it to Sherlock with the message: I think he’s broken. –MH

A long silence followed, and Mycroft imagined he could hear his little brother thinking furiously, putting pieces together no one else in the world would understand. Then his phone buzzed.

Watch him for one more week. I can finish the network in a week. –SH

All right. You will, of course, owe me. –MH

I’ll buy you a cake. –SH

Mycroft smiled, pleasantly surprised to find that Sherlock’s dry sense of humor had survived the three years of chasing down Moriarty’s network. He texted back: That will suffice. Be careful. –MH

I always am. –SH


	12. Day 12 -- Making Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((I apologize for how long this has taken; I wrote the first draft and posted it on ff.net ages ago, but when I was looking through the chapter again before posting it here, I knew it needed more at the end. Thank you to everyone who stuck through the last drabble, which was complete crap. I think this one turned out a little better.))

John had spent a lot of time imagining how Sherlock would come back, if he ever did. He knew it was impossible, that he'd seen the dead body, but imagining various scenarios for Sherlock's return had become something of an obsession with him. Would he text first, giving John a warning before coming back into his life? Or would he suddenly reappear and surprise John into a reaction? Would John punch him or kiss him first? Would their reunion be in the flat or St. Bart's or somewhere public and neutral?

As much time as he'd spent imagining Sherlock's return, somehow he'd managed to always see himself clothed until he was ready to be unclothed. And Sherlock being Sherlock, he managed to undermine even that idea.

A week after his most recent graffiti work, John was in the shower after a day at the clinic. He was tired and out of sorts after dealing with what seemed like hundreds of people, all wanting something from him, and all he wanted was to curl up in his dressing gown with a fifth of whisky, a fire, and a book. He was washing the shampoo out of his hair when he felt a cold draft touch him. He turned just as the shower curtain was yanked aside by a long-fingered pale hand. John staggered back a step, his back and buttocks hitting the shower wall as he stared at Sherlock Holmes.

"Hullo, John," the possible-apparition said. "I'm back." He flicked a glance over John's body, smiled, and shut the curtain again. A second later, the bathroom door shut as well.

John stayed where he was for better than a full minute, staring at the closed shower curtain. His mind was scrambling, trying to make sense of what had just happened, locking his muscles down as he stood under the hot spray. Then he started swearing loudly as a stream of shampoo got into his eye, half-blinding him for a moment. The pain was useful in one way, though: he didn't feel pain in dreams. So unless he'd dropped off for a second while showering, or he was hallucinating, he'd actually just seen his dead friend.

He got his eye rinsed out and finished rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. Then, moving slowly, he went through the rest of his washing routine. Conditioner, washing his face and body, using the nailbrush to get under his finger- and toenails. He was in no rush to get out to the sitting room. If it had been reality, if Sherlock Holmes had cheated death somehow, then he wasn't going anywhere and he could wait while John got his brain together. If it had been a dream or hallucination, he was going to blow his fucking brains out with the pistol in the sitting room, and he wasn't in a rush to do that either.

At last, he'd cleaned everything he could think of, and his fingers were becoming a bit pruney. Time to face the music. He got out of the shower and took his time drying himself off before wrapping the towel around his hips and walking out to the sitting room. So which would it be, the lady or the tiger? The detective or the gun?

Even half-expecting it, John was stunned to see Sherlock enthroned in his old chair, his hands pressed together against his mouth, his electric blue eyes fixed on John. John stopped in the doorway, his hands hanging loose at his sides as he stared at Sherlock. Realizing he was framed in the doorway, uncomfortably exposed if this was a trick of some sort, he shifted to his left, putting a wall behind him.

They stayed there, staring at each other, neither daring to move. John had the sense that something was waiting, balanced and anticipating someone's movement. Then Sherlock's hands came down, pressing on the arms of his chair and launching the skinny man forward toward John. John rocked back on his heels, shifting one foot back slightly to center himself instinctively in a fighting ready stance as Sherlock got closer. Sherlock didn't slow, seemingly intent on plowing straight through John and the wall. John's hands came up as Sherlock came within arm's reach, the doctor bracing himself for a ghost going through his hands.

Instead, the heels of his hands slammed against very solid, very bony shoulders, sending shock waves through his body as his hands clamped on Sherlock's shoulders, stopping the skinny man cold.

"You're real," John said blankly. "You're really here."

"Yes, John," Sherlock said, standing still in front of him. He'd changed, in the last three years. His hair was about the same length, but it was an odd shade of strawberry blond. John was of the opinion that it made him look like an American surfer, the sort of person who flew in from LA to experience the "old country". His facial bones stood out more than usual, and his eyes seemed to burn like beacons in his too-pale face. The dark marks under his eyes were darker too. And he was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, the sort of thing the old Sherlock would have sneered at as 'gaudy'.

John took a step back, his heel brushing the wall behind him as one hand moved to Sherlock's neck, feeling for a pulse. There it was, strong and steady as ever. Sherlock's Adam's apple bobbed against his fingers as the detective swallowed. "I suppose you have questions," Sherlock said, clearing his throat.

"A few," John agreed. "But first…" Quick as a lash, he reared back with his left hand and punched Sherlock across the face as hard as he could.

Sherlock went down in a tangle of limbs, his hands coming up instinctively to protect his head. But he didn't cry out, didn't protest or tell John to stop. He just lay there, seeming to wait. John hesitated, seeing blood around Sherlock's pale fingers.

"Well?" Sherlock asked after a few beats of silence. "Are you going to continue 'beating the shit out of me', or can I get up now?"

"Oh for God's sake," John sighed, sitting on the floor next to Sherlock. "Let me see." He tugged on Sherlock's wrists until the detective let his hands be drawn away from his narrow face. His nose was bleeding all over the place, and the side of his face was already swelling up, but John had seen far worse after a bar fight. He lightly touched the bruised cheekbone, wincing at the pain in his knuckles. "Hold on, sit up." John helped Sherlock sit up and tip his head forward so the blood didn't run down his throat, then the doctor went for his medical kit and a flannel.

Sherlock sat still, letting John go through his ministrations, never taking his eyes off the doctor. "Mycroft said you were breaking," he said.

"Did he?" John asked absently, cleaning the blood off Sherlock's face.

"Mm-hm. He sent me a picture of the animal suit."

John stopped cold, staring at Sherlock. "He _what_?" he asked, shocked. He knew he shouldn't be so surprised, not with the resources Mycroft had, but still…

"Yes." Sherlock's eyes searched John's. "I'm…I can't begin to say…there was good reason…"

"Shut up," John said quietly, setting the flannel down. He kissed Sherlock hard, biting at his lips and claiming his mouth with his tongue. He felt Sherlock tense under him; from surprise, or fear, or what, John didn't know, but a moment later Sherlock's hands came up, running through John's hair and settling on the back of his neck and his shoulder. And Sherlock started kissing him back. John's brain almost melted at the feeling of their tongues running against each other, Sherlock lightly catching his bottom lip and tugging. Then Sherlock pushed up a little, upending John and sending the smaller man to the ground.

John growled, wrapping his legs around Sherlock's waist and shoving their hips hard together. Sherlock's eyes went wide as he grabbed John's wrists, pinning him down to the floor. "What…?" the detective started to ask, and John didn't care about the rest of the question. He had been too alone for too long, and he needed Sherlock _now_. He pressed his back against the floor, shoving his body up against Sherlock’s as best as he could.

"Either hit me or kiss me, I don't care which," John said, his nose almost touching Sherlock's.

Sherlock stared down at John, the wheels in his brain turning. "John," he said very seriously. "I love you. Why would I hit you?"

I love you. Those three precious words they had never said between them. After three years of silence, three years of crying alone and dealing with the crushing loneliness, finally hearing those words from the man John was pretty sure he loved…it was almost too much. Tears welled up in his eyes, spilling out the corners and trailing down to soak the hair at his temples. "Christ, Sherlock, that's not something to fuck around with…"

"I'm not," Sherlock said. He released John's wrists and touched his cheek, suddenly looking very unsure of himself. "I faked my death to save your life."

John pressed his fists into his eyes, trying and failing to hold back a sob. "You left me alone," he said.

"I'm sorry. I had to. Moriarty had snipers on you and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, the only way to keep them from shooting you was to die myself, and…"

"Shhh," John said, reaching up and touching Sherlock's lips with the tips of his fingers. "You can amaze me with your brilliance later, all right? I've missed you, Sherlock." He cupped the back of Sherlock's head and pulled him down for another kiss.

Whatever Sherlock was going to say was lost in a soft groan as he opened willingly to John. This kiss was sweeter, slower, a rediscovery after far too much time apart, and John took the opportunity to unbutton Sherlock’s shirt in an effort to level the playing field a little.

Sherlock’s breath stuttered out of his nose as John smoothed his hands over the smooth, bare chest underneath the unbuttoned shirt. Then the doctor pulled away, frowning a little, and pressed a hand against Sherlock’s shoulder to roll the taller man back. “Have you eaten at _all_ since falling?” he asked, tracing Sherlock’s ribs with the tips of his fingers.

“Of course,” Sherlock rumbled, his breath catching beautifully as his muscles trembled under John’s hand. “Perhaps not as often as you would…oh!” John’s fingers had brushed over his nipples, tweaking them up to points before the knowing thumbs rubbed over them gently. Sherlock threw his head back, cracking the back of his skull against the floor as he pressed up against John’s hands.

“Easy, there,” John murmured. He grabbed his towel from where it had fallen and bunched it up, slipping it under Sherlock’s head. He lingered there, stroking Sherlock’s dark curls and following his sharp jawline up to his kiss-swollen lips. “Have you gone farther before?” he asked softly.

Sherlock’s eyes flicked away and back with an expression that looked a lot like shame. “Not in the sense you mean,” he said, each word sounding like it was being pulled out of him with a team of wild horses with chains. “Not…like this.”

Maybe John wasn’t as fast on the uptake as Sherlock, and his skills of deduction were pitifully childish next to the great detective’s. But he’d been a doctor quite a while, and knew about the sorts of things junkies did to get their next fix. He bent and kissed Sherlock’s mouth tenderly. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “It really is.”

Sherlock melted under John, reaching up to stroke his fingers through the greying blond strands as he wrapped his other arm around John’s waist. “John,” he breathed softly.

“Let’s take this to my room,” John suggested, nuzzling his nose tenderly against Sherlock’s. “I’m getting too old to romp on the floor like a randy teenager.”

Sherlock blushed scarlet, but his pupils flared wide as he sat up and took John’s hand to stand. Leaving the towel where it had fallen, the two denizens of 221B made their way up the stairs to John’s room, exchanging little kisses and soft murmurs as they went.

As soon as they were inside John’s room, John shut the door behind them and pinned Sherlock to the wood, kissing the taller man senseless as he got Sherlock’s shirt all the way off and puddled on the floor. Then his fingers touched flesh-warmed metal and he pulled back a little to look down at Sherlock’s chest. Emotion struck the doctor in the center of the chest, making it hard to catch his breath properly. Sherlock was still wearing John’s dog tags.

The detective followed John’s look and smiled, a strangely shy expression as he tangled his fingers in the chain and curled his hand around the round tags. There was an easy familiarity in the gesture that spoke of habit; Sherlock touched the tags a lot. Why?

“Because they remind me why I continued to fight,” Sherlock said quietly, displaying his old habit of reading John’s mind and replying to unspoken thoughts.

John’s throat closed up, and he leaned into Sherlock’s sturdy body as he pressed mindless kisses along Sherlock’s collarbone. Warmth sang through him as Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s waist, holding him close.

Moving in tandem, the pair shifted to the bed. Sherlock laid John back on his back and took his time looking the smaller man over. John was powerfully reminded of the night when Sherlock persuaded John to strip for him in the sitting room, and his breathing kicked up as he reached for the fastenings of Sherlock’s trousers.

Sherlock brushed his hands aside lightly, doing those particular honors himself as his eyes raked over John slowly. John wondered, not for the first time, what Sherlock was seeing. The weight loss he’d sustained from an eating disorder related to depression (he found it hard to eat most days)? The yellow paint on the side of his left thumb? His shaving patterns? His brain threatened to run itself into exhaustion until the moment Sherlock stepped out of his trousers and pants. Then everything narrowed to a single thought: _Sherlock_.

He’d seen Sherlock naked before, of course. Sherlock was anything but body-shy before they began the slow dance toward becoming more; he’d lost track how many times he’d come home to find Sherlock flopped naked on the sofa. It had gotten to the point where John stopped reacting until the day they went to Buckingham Palace, when he’d ordered Sherlock to put something on for the sake of the police officers watching the Skype chat with him. But this was different. Now he knew he could touch. It was like walking into a candy shop and being told it was all for him; he didn’t know where to begin. “Oh,” he breathed, the word escaping him in a soft rush of air.

Sherlock settled onto the bed next to him and John shifted up onto his knees, looking at the pale, beautiful man on his bed. New scars, quite a few of them. He wanted to know the story of each one, memorize them and print them in his mind forever so he’d know what Sherlock had been through without him. He reached out, his left hand trembling a little as he touched the soft skin he’d dreamed about for years. Both of them let out soft breaths of delight as John ran his fingers delicately down Sherlock’s sides. Then Sherlock giggled, flushing bright red like a girl. “Tickles,” he said apologetically when John raised an eyebrow at him.

That was too adorable for words and deserved a kiss. John leaned up and kissed Sherlock sweetly, the kiss deepening naturally as his hand trailed over Sherlock’s abdomen. Sherlock let out a soft, needy sound that was muffled between them. The vibrations shot straight to John’s groin, and he rewarded the detective with a very light stroke across Sherlock’s long, heavy cock.

There was no muffling the sound that time. Sherlock threw his head back with a strangled noise, his hips bucking up into John’s touch as his hands fisted at his sides. He looked utterly wanton and devastatingly gorgeous, and John was overcome with the desire to get Sherlock to make that noise again.

Time melted away as John teased a veritable symphony of sounds out of Sherlock with experimental touches. He found the sensitive spot behind Sherlock’s right earlobe and lingered there a while until Sherlock growled and bit the side of John’s neck in a silent plea for _more_. John was more than happy to oblige. Turning, he pressed Sherlock down onto the bed and hovered over him. There were still traces of blood spotting Sherlock’s upper lip, and his face was swelling up a bit. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine, John.” Touch of impatience in the deep, familiar voice. “Trust me when I say, your punch was nothing compared to some of the things I’ve been through in the last years.”

John’s heart broke for Sherlock, and he bent, kissing Sherlock’s lips tenderly and trying to erase the pain. Sherlock went soft and pliant under him, all long limbs grasping at John and scarred skin shining with sweat, and later, later, John will examine every scar, read the story of the years apart written in painful marks, but right now, his focus is _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock_. He reached between them, wrapping his hand around Sherlock’s leaking cock, and the noise he extracted from his lover goes straight to his groin.

Sherlock liked long strokes, with John’s thumb flicking across the wet head every now and again, never anything that could fall into a pattern, nothing predictable, and the inconsistency seemed to draw heavenly noises from Sherlock as he thrust into John’s knowing hand.

“Not alone,” Sherlock half-sobbed, his lightning blue eyes locking on John’s. His pupils were enormous, filled with pinpricks of light from fairy lights left strung around John’s room from the need to combat the dark. He was elfin, otherworldly, amazing, and his focus was entirely on _John_. “John, with me…”

There were so many layers of pain and loneliness in Sherlock’s voice, enough for a sensitive ear to hear how bad things had been. Murmuring soothing little nothings, John stretched himself on top of Sherlock, mindful of his solid weight on Sherlock’s possible injuries. The moment Sherlock shifted and thrust, though, rubbing their cocks together in a slow press of delight that escalated quickly to frenzied thrusting, John lost everything but _Sherlock_. When they came, it was a flash of ecstasy, doubled and trebled as it passed between them with each cry of completion.

Later, much later, when they had cleaned themselves up and settled back into the bed, John asked the fundamental question: “Is it done?”

“Almost,” Sherlock murmured back, his warm breath tickling John’s ear. “There’s something happening here in London, something that required my attention. But it should be the last.”

“I’m helping.” No room for argument in that simple statement, but John held his breath anyway.

“Of course you are.” Sherlock kissed him gently. “I would be lost without my John.”


	13. Day 13: Eating Ice Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Two guesses what my favorite ice cream flavor is.))

**Day Thirteen: Eating Ice Cream**

 

_The more things change, the more they stay the same._

John stared at the blinking cursor on his laptop screen, trying to find the right words to express what he was thinking. Not for the first time, he cursed his inability to really write the way he wanted; a real writer would have no trouble finding a good way to say "Sherlock's back, and everything's different, but everything's the same too".

Sherlock had been home for thirty-six hours (not that he'd been counting or anything), and it was already like he'd never been gone. He'd taken over the kitchen table again for his experiments, the flat had returned to its old state of organized chaos, and John had been woken at three am by the violin.

Sherlock had changed. The changes were far more than the cosmetic, the loss of weight and the different hair color. There was something different about his eyes, the way he carried himself. And it broke John's heart that he recognized what had changed. He'd seen it a thousand times while in the service. It was the look the kids got after they'd seen true war, the horrors of death. It was heartbreaking in the young adults who first learned the hard way that the world was a horrible place. It was shattering to see Sherlock like that.

John glanced up as the flat door opened to let Sherlock in. He wasn't exactly grinning from ear to ear, Sherlock didn't do that, but he did have a bounce in his step as he manhandled a cooler through the door and into the kitchen. John had to smile. And yet things hadn't changed a bit. Sherlock was still an insomniac who had no sense of social graces and brought body parts home from St. Bart's to dissect.

Sherlock set the cooler on the kitchen table with a heavy thud and walked into the sitting room to drop a kiss on John's cheek. "Attempting to construct a blog with two fingers again?" he asked, resting his chin on the top of John's head.

"Does my typing style still drive you up the wall?" John asked, tipping his head back a bit to grin insolently at Sherlock. "Shoo, you know I hate it when you read over my shoulder."

"Fine," Sherlock sighed, straightening up. "Those organs need to be frozen anyway."

"Mm, try not to take up the whole freezer," John said absently, folding his hands under his chin as he stared at the screen. "I'm planning to make some 'I don't feel like cooking tonight' dinners and squirreling them away."

"Duly noted."

Which meant, John knew, that the whole freezer would soon be filled with organs and possibly a hand or two. He shook his head slightly, smiling as he stared at the one line he'd managed. He distantly heard the freezer door open; he ignored the shuffling sounds in favor of tapping his fingers on the desk.

"John?" Sherlock sounded odd, like he was holding his breath and calling John's name at the same time.

"Hmm?"

"Could you come here a moment, please?" John's head came up a little. Now Sherlock sounded like he was being choked, which was a little worrying.

"Sure," he said, getting up and walking toward the kitchen. "I'm about to bin the idea of a 'he's back' entry until you start…working…cases…" His voice trailed off as Sherlock turned to face him, a carton in either hand.

"Care to explain why we have ten cartons of…" Sherlock turned one of the cartons and theatrically read the name, "dark chocolate raspberry ice cream in the freezer?"

If a hole had opened up right there in the center of the kitchen floor, John would have gratefully fallen into it and found a way to close it after himself. He'd just bought those, too, that was the sad part. If Sherlock had come back two days sooner…well. But he hadn't, and now John had to face the music. "Because until thirty-six hours ago, it wasn't 'we' anymore," he said, sticking his hands in his jean pockets.

Sherlock's face went very still for a moment as he stared at John. Looking back into those ever-changing eyes, John thought he saw flickers of regret, pain, the stories he'd never hear about those three years away, and under all of it, a sense that Sherlock knew exactly what he'd done to John and wished he could take it back. "So you…?"

"Yeah, well, apparently I'm actually a thirteen-year-old girl cleverly disguised as a forty-four year old man, and I need chocolate ice cream on each…anniversary." Which was that very day: June 12th, the day Sherlock had fallen from the roof of St. Bart's and killed a piece of John's heart.

"Oh." Sherlock regarded the cartons in his hands and put one back. "I guess…today is the anniversary, so…"

John went to the silverware drawer and produced two spoons. "Put the body parts away; I'll meet you on the sofa," he said.

Five minutes later, they were on the sofa arguing over the remote and which crap telly show they were going to watch. Behind them on John's laptop, his newest blog entry drew the most comments of any to date:

_The more things change, the more they stay the same._

_Sherlock is back. And we're about to start tearing through my chocolate ice cream stash while watching telly together. It's good to return to a degree of normality._


	14. Day Fourteen: Genderswapped

**Day Fourteen: Genderswapped**

John sat back in his chair and looked around the pub, surprisingly bored out of his mind. Once upon a time, he’d been able to come to places like this and have a good time without needing a date. Now? He just wanted to be back in 221B. He sighed, swirling his drink around in his glass. Sherlock had been out on some case for the last week or so, only coming home in the middle of the night or while John was at work, so he hadn’t seen much of his flatmate. He was trying very hard not to relate the silent flat to the years Sherlock had been gone.

He sipped his drink again as he scanned the people around him. He’d learned a lot from Sherlock in the time before the Fall (always capitalized in his mind), and more since his flatmate came back a month ago. Sherlock seemed to need to show John how to deduce, even if the doctor would never be as good at it as Sherlock. All right, what could he gather about the people around him? A woman who’d just passed him was married, but trying to hide it; he could see the pale band where her ring usually lived on her left hand. The small group of men off in the corner was here on a pulling night; they were watching the women with rapt interest.

The woman chatting up one of the men at the pub had a look about her that John recognized but couldn’t place. She was tall, unusually so for a woman, with long blonde hair and a lovely skirt suit. Watching her, John decided she was his type, or would be if he and Sherlock weren’t…whatever in the hell they were. They hadn’t talked about that, not since John’s very enthusiastic reaction to Sherlock’s return. Still. John had been faithful to Sherlock’s memory for three years. He wasn’t about to let a little weirdness push him away now.

The man with whom the blonde lady had been talking walked away, shaking his head, and the woman turned to look after him. John almost dropped his drink in his lap. If that wasn’t Sherlock in drag, it was his twin sister. It was a testament to the oddness of their relationship that John’s first thought was ‘Sherlock in drag’ with the twin sister idea tagging along a few seconds later.

Those brilliant blue eyes tracked across the pub, then stopped on John as the maybe-probably-Sherlock took a quick breath. Whoever had taught him drag had done an amazing job; John only picked up the telltale signs because he was looking for them. A dark blue silk scarf (of course) covered Sherlock’s Adam’s apple, and somehow he’d gotten his body to follow the usual female curves without looking overdone or fake. John suspected a corset in there somewhere.

Sherlock came over to John’s table, walking with unfair grace in his high heels, and bent to kiss John’s cheek. “John, darling!” he said. His voice even sounded right for a woman’s, higher than his usual baritone without going into the silly falsetto. “You’re late, again.”

John leaned over and murmured, “Case?”

“Almost over, thank God,” Sherlock murmured back. “Help me sell the disguise; I’m Shirley.”

“Of course.” John cupped Sherlock’s face in both hands and kissed his mouth. He wasn’t used to tasting lipstick anymore. That was something he hadn’t missed about kissing women on dates. “Sorry, darling. You know how traffic can be.” Sherlock beamed at John, fully in character, and sat at his table.

They chatted for a few moments, idle stuff that Sherlock obviously wasn’t paying any attention to, judging from the way his eyes roamed restlessly around the pub. When John had gotten a tittering little laugh without a real answer three times in a row, he finished his comment with, “Did I mention that my nose is on fire, and that I have fifteen wild badgers living in my trousers?”

Sherlock blinked, visibly processing the comment, and turned his full attention to John with a raised eyebrow. “Badgers?” he asked, keeping in character with an effort.

“I’m sorry, would you prefer ferrets?” John asked, all innocence.

The slow grin spreading across Sherlock’s face like a winter sunrise was the best reward for John goofing off. “I’ve been reliably informed ferrets bite. It would be _such_ a shame for them to bite at…your soft, tender bits.”

If Sherlock was trying to make John blush, mission freaking accomplished. John cleared his throat a few times and sipped his drink, trying to make his head stop overheating. Then Sherlock went still, his sharp eyes locked on someone across the pub, his whole attitude that of a hunting falcon locked onto its prey. “That’s him,” he murmured, back to his regular voice. Hearing it again after the last fifteen minutes of Sherlock-as-a-woman was disconcertingly sexy. John kept his mind on task with an effort, casually glancing over his shoulder to see the person Sherlock was referencing.

The guy looked a bit like Mycroft had at first glance: mostly harmless, dressed in a natty three-piece suit. He was short, about John’s height, probably in his mid-fifties. And good Lord, he looked out of place in the pub. Sherlock was breathing shallowly, tension coiling in his body. “Who is he?” John asked quietly.

“Blackmailer. Murderer-by-order. The sort who doesn’t get his hands dirty.” Sherlock was almost growling the words. He shifted a little in his seat, and John heard the soft click of his heels landing on the floor. “A lesser Moriarty. Are you sober enough to run?”

“Can you run in that skirt?” John got a glare for his pains and raised his hands a little in surrender before going for his wallet. He dropped a twenty-pound note on the table before nodding. “Lay on, Macduff.”

Sherlock’s teeth flashed in a brief grin as he got up, casually drawing a knife from a sheath at the small of his back and cutting the side seams of his skirt.

The blackmailer had his back to the partners as they approached him, but turned when Sherlock said in his sweet girl voice, “Hello sweetie.”

A half-kilometer chase and an hour later, John and Sherlock watched as a police officer put the handcuffed blackmailer in the back of a car. Sherlock was sitting on a stoop, massaging his blistered feet with a look of pained annoyance. “For future reference, I’m wearing flats any time I have to play female characters,” he said.

“Why’d you have to play a girl, anyway?” John asked, sitting a step down from Sherlock and taking one long foot between his hands. “You’ll want to soak your poor feet in Epsom salts when we get home.”

“He had people watching at his usual haunts to make sure I wasn’t there. They weren’t looking for a strangely tall woman with blonde hair.” Sherlock had lost his wig somewhere along the way, and his stockings were completely destroyed. He was a tousled wreck, flushed from running, and John thought he’d never looked more attractive.

“You wouldn’t be so strangely tall if you’d worn flats,” John pointed out, pressing both thumbs into Sherlock’s arch.

“Heels helped create the body movements necessary to sell the female persona,” Sherlock said, wincing. “Not quite so hard, John, please.”

“Sorry.” John rubbed soothing circles, relaxing Sherlock’s tense muscles.

Lestrade walked up then, a pair of black heels dangling from his index and middle fingers. “Size twelve women’s heels,” he said, making a show of examining them. “Might I assume these belong to the detective currently dressed as a woman?”

Sherlock leaned up, snatching the heels from Lestrade. “Amazing, Lestrade. Your deductive abilities seem to have improved in my absence.”

John hid a smile, ducking his head, and Lestrade chuckled. “Good work, Sherlock. Seriously. Try not to chase anyone else to Cardiff or wherever in your bare feet. I think John might kill you.”

“Possibly,” John agreed placidly, releasing Sherlock’s feet. “Let’s go home and get your feet soaking.”

Sherlock put his heels on and calmly walked to the curb with John, rolling his eyes at the good-natured wolf-whistling from behind them. “What exactly is the point of that whistle pattern?” he asked John as he flagged a cab down.

“The wolf-whistle?” John asked, opening the door for Sherlock. “It’s generally a way to say ‘hey baby, you’re looking fine’.” Sherlock opened his mouth, probably to ask about one of the idioms, but John shook his head, resting his hands on Sherlock’s narrow waist and kissing him. “I’ll explain later. Let’s go home.”

As they pulled away in the cab, John happened to glance back in time to see Lestrade staring after them, his mouth hanging open. Oh. Right. Lestrade didn’t know about their relationship, such as it was or wasn’t. John smirked to himself. He foresaw a lot of text messages in the near future.

((Points to anyone who got the references to two sci-fi shows in this chapter.))


End file.
